Another little anecdote

I am not sure if you read about this in Dec last year….’Two British passengers, aged 70 and 72, were arrested on a cruise ship returning to Europe from the Caribbean after the ship docked at the cruise terminal in Lisbon, Portugal.  Portuguese police stated that the couple were arrested with a large amount of cocaine concealed in suitcases in their cruise ship cabin’

So it is known that people do try an smuggle drugs on a cruise.  When i was in South America we had overnights at Buenos Aires and one in Rio de Janeiro.  We had something called in port manning,  this is where a percentage of the crew have to stay on board in port just in case of an emergency.

It was my turn to do my port manning and I was relaxing in my cabin at about 11pm i think, i then had a knock at my door and it was the Staff Captain and about 5 burly police with HUGE Alsatian dogs and guns.  The Staff Captain proceeded to tell me that the customs were on board doing a drugs search in the crew area and iI was to join them as my crew cabins were about to get raided.  It was like something out of the movies, banging on doors, dogs barking.  I knew which of my staff were ashore so i had to open their cabins to let the dogs in.

Nothing was found I must say but it was a surreal experience being on a drugs raid in South America.  It just shows that customs don’t overlook crew when they are in search mode.