Inspired by the description of Bolivia\'s San Pedro Prison in the Lonely Planet guidebook, Young decided to spend four months listening to inmate Mcfadden and learning about one of the Strangest places on earth.
This is cutting-edge travel-writing and a fascinating account of infiltration into the South American drug culture..
Yet Marching Powder is also the tale of friendship, a place where horror is countered by humor and cruelty and compassion can inhabit the same cell.
Even the prison cat is addicted.
In San Pedro, cocaine--Bolivian Marching powder--makes life bearable.
Violence is a constant threat, and sections of San Pedro that echo with the sound of children by day house some of Bolivia\'s busiest Cocaine laboratories by night.
It is a place where corrupt politicians and drug lords live in luxury apartments, while the poorest prisoners are subjected to squalor and deprivation.
Women and children live with imprisoned family members.
Others run shops and restaurants.
Inmates are expected to buy their cells from real estate agents.
This book establishes that San Pedro is not your average prison.
The result is Marching Powder .
Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next three months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the Strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time.
They formed an instant Friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas\'s experiences in the jail.
Intrigued, the young Australian journalisted went to La Paz and joined one of Thomas\'s illegal tours.
Rusty Young was backpacking in South America when he heard about Thomas McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours inside Bolivia\'s notorious San Pedro prison.
Inspired by the description of Bolivia\'s San Pedro Prison in the Lonely Planet guidebook, Young decided to spend four months listening to inmate Mcfadden and learning about one of the Strangest places on earth
