Parkway Drive Tell Of Border Patrol Nightmare While In South America

Even though they might be one of the biggest bands in the world at the moment, it doesn’t always go Parkway Drive‘s way. Currently doing the rounds in support of the fresh album Atlas, Drummer Ben Gordon told triple j of a harrowing ordeal while travelling through South America.

Speaking to Lachie Macara, Gordon set the scene: “When we finished recording Atlas we had about 3 or 4 months off as a band, where we said no interviews, no photo shoots; let’s just do what we want… So we went travelling.”

“Me and [bass player] Jia went down to South America and picked up some motorbikes in Peru. We were planning on riding up to Mexico over two months. So we were riding up, having a great old time – catching waves and just loving it.”

However, things quickly turned very sour: he continues the story, “But we got to the border of Ecuador, thinking we were going to go straight through, and we ran into some problems… all of a sudden the Ecuador official takes our bikes and says, ‘No more. These are our bikes, you go home’.”

Needless to say, the pair were stranded in the country and spent 5 days stuck in an awful city, sleeping in the dirt while they spoke to officials and lawyers for advice as to how to get their bikes back. It was all looking very doubtful until the band’s Peruvian lawyer stepped up.

“Our Peruvian lawyer’s advice was: ‘Don’t do it properly. There’s a prostitute I know that will sleep with the district attorney and she’ll get your bikes back’… So we hired this prostitute.”

Long story short – one gift bottle of wine later, the prostitute was in the hotel room with the border patrol official, and despite the reassurance of the prostitute, who told the boys “It’s all good. It’s going to work”, the plan failed. The official didn’t give them their bikes back. Gordon explains, “he didn’t end up coming through. We just ended up shouting him a great night and got nothing in return.”

Things soon got even worse and the two soon found themselves fearing for their safety, and fearful that they would end up in jail. “It was getting to that point where it was real sketchy. We could have just left and been fined, but we pushed it real far and started to get in trouble ourselves and we thought ‘if they turn on us for trying to bribe them we could be in a Peruvian jail for the next 10 years’. So we just suffered the loss and left.”

They left behind stacks of gear and fled to Mexico. Despite the nightmare, Gordon concluded “We did it rough, let’s put it that way! But we loved it and we’ll probably go back.”

They’re sure to have none of that trouble here while they tour in support of the album with bro’s I Killed The Prom Queen

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