Dodgy police in Peru

We had our first run-in with a corrupt Peruvian police officer on Friday afternoon.  We'd been happily driving along quite a busy dual carriageway when the officer on his motorbike gestured for us to pull over.  I thought he was going to have words about the cracked windscreen, but instead he said Paul had gone through a red light.  He asked for Paul's driving licence and the van's insurance, then said he was going to issue us with a ticket that had to be paid at a bank before we'd be able to leave the country.

He got out a book and asked if we could read Spanish - he showed us a page in the book and said the fine was going to be 444 soles (about £100).  "That's a lot of money, isn't it?" he said. "Well, yeah," was the obvious answer. To which he goes, "Well, I don't have to give you the ticket if you just pay me some money." 

At this point Paul was like, "Will you stop understanding so much of what he's saying!"  So suddenly neither of us could understand much Spanish.  The officer was going "So what do you say? Do you want to give me some money or do you want the ticket (papelleta)?"  Paul and I shrugged our shoulders, "Papelleta?! What's that?" (Repeat this exchange several times). Paul got out the phrase book and looked up 'translator' and asked in English, "Can we go to the police station? Is there a traductor?"  "No," said the officer, "Only Castellano. What? You have no money, no dollars?" What the hell did he just say? We shrugged. "Huh?"

It took about 10 minutes for him to get bored of us. He eventually put his notebook back in his pocket, gave us our documents back and told Paul to drive safely.