VISITING COLOMBIA'S COCAINE FACTORY ZONE

The area where the Lost City was built centuries ago now is home to
one of the most lucrative and destructive businesses in the world:
cocaine trafficking. And for a $10 fee, those who come to see the
Lost City can take a detour to see the first stage of the dirty
process involving gasoline and sulfuric acid, among other appetizing
ingredients, that makes a simple, hard-edged leaf into a deadly and
addictive powder.

On my recent trip, three travelers accompanied by myself and a
photographer, paid close attention to all the details, then asked
questions of Adan Bedoya, a 62-year-old campesino from the Santa
Marta mountain range, who showed us through the process step by step.
The tourists then toyed with the ingredients and took some photos in
the so-called "factory" for their parents. One of them asked Bedoya
for some cocaine and was disappointed to find that Bedoya rarely has
contact with "the actual stuff."

The irony is that Bedoya says he makes about $500 a month doing these
short tours, more than he does selling his finished product from this
lab, which is a gooey paste that he sells to middlemen who take it to
a different, more sophisticated laboratory to make it into the powder
that you might have seen at a party or two in Miami.