....proceeding to immigration at the airport I was met by a gentleman who again seemed to take his time looking through my passport. This was all too familiar to me by now and once again it was only because he had never seen a Greek passport before and was intrigued. We shared a little joke before I completed formalities. Then the real fun began.

I was next greeted by a couple of guys who wanted to inspect my hand luggage. No issue initially but upon inspecting my boarding pass they decided to take a bit of time 'talking to me'. I spent the next 1 hour being interrogated by this guy and his colleague, who asked me way too many questions to keep me comfortable. He went through my bag, asked me about my travel history, where I was going, even looked through all my mobile phone contacts and started looking at pictures on my camera at which point I was starting to get a little annoyed as I thought it was a bit excessive for a routine check. When I asked what the issue was, he explained to me that my travel route (La Paz-Lima-Madrid) was a notorious drug trafficking route and they had to make thorough checks. I was travelling alone, on a passport they had never seen, unshaven, wearing a cap and hooded jacket with a small backpack and probably looked slightly under the weather due to the cold i had just developed, so I guess they thought i may be an 'interesting passenger.'

They kept on asking if I was feeling ok (I couldn't work out why) but then they took me into a change room to do some breathing tests on me. The only thing I could assume is that they were trying to work out if I was on any drugs or not. After answering all their questions (mind you all this was being conducted in my broken Spanish) I thought I was done, but they were not. I was then escorted out onto the tarmac where all the bags where waiting to be loaded. I was asked to open my backpack for inspection by them in front of some military police. The only thing I had a problem with was that they were now messing up my 'organised' packing…pfff!!' They found the bottle of wine I had bought as a gift and inspected this very closely to see if anything was inside or if there were remnants of dissolved particles. I was really starting to getting annoyed but of course had nothing to fear. I knew I was being singled out because of the way I looked but had to keep my cool as I knew my rights might not be the same as if I was in a western country. Eventually they were satisfied and even said gracias but I also had to sign off on a form confirming that I had been searched and all was ok. I think they could tell I was annoyed with my bag being messed up as they almost tried to help me tidy it up! I was just keen to close it up and get out of there.

He did say to me that I was only 1 of maybe 3 people that were taking the same flight connection but I didn't buy it as I was the only one searched this extensively, saw at least 6 or 7 other people on the same flight to Madrid and knew that it was down to my passport and the way I looked. I stayed annoyed for the most of the flight back to Madrid but finally let it go once I touched down on European soil as it felt like being back home.