I am afraid to report that the reputation of the self - styled Los Angeles Guardianes (Peruvian Traffic Rozzers) as thieving, robbing bastards who like to try to treat foreign bikers as mobile ATMs, is wholly justified.

My compadre and I were stopped 3 times the day we travelled north on the Panamericana from Lima 2 days ago with the same routine:

1. Give us your licence
2. You have committed an infracion (we hadn´t)
3. You have to get your licence back from your embassy in Lima
4. Or, you can give me 100USD now and the infracion is cancelled.

We got around this the first time by just holding our ground, shaking our heads and repeating No, no, no, (a la Amy Winehouse). We also played reverse Good Cop, Bad Cop with him, confused him by saying that Gales and Escocia don´t have embassies in Lima, only in London, asking for his name, and hamming up taking notes and photos of his name, number and patrol car. After an hour, he got bored / embarassed and gave us back the licences.

By the time the third one happened in the same evening, we had got a lot more polished - I refused to speak to them, I have an almost expired UAE licence which I gave to him and didn´t mind losing and mi compadre just gave the paper counterfoil to his UK licence.

The biggest joke of all was that the last pig eventually waved us on, warning us to get off the road before dark as this area was renowned for bandidos holding travellers up at gunpoint during the night. I don´t think he saw the irony that he had the barefaced, no - shame cheek to try exactly the same stunt in broad daylight. Needless to say we got straight through Northern Peru the next day and into Ecuador asap, with a bad taste in our mouths about Peru.....

The most important thing to remember is not to pay these pigs anything, even if they start bargaining down to what seems like a little bit of money to you, as it will only encourage them to hassle other foreign bikers....