Papillon by Henri Charrière

At six in the morning eight soldiers and two corporals accompanied by a lieutenant handcuffed us, and we set off for Barranquilla in an army truck. We did the hundred and ten miles in three and a half hours. At ten o'clock we were in the prison called the "80," Calle Medellin, in Barranquilla. So much effort to avoid going to Barranquilla, and there we were all the same! It was an important city, the biggest port in Colombia, situated inland on an estuary of the river Magdalena. Its prison was big too: four hundred prisoners and nearly a hundred guards. It was organized like a European prison, with double walls more than twenty-five feet high.

We were received by the prison's general staff and the director, Don Gregorio. The prison had four yards, two on one side, two on the other, separated by a long chapel which was used for mass as well as the visitors' room. We were put in the yard for the most dangerous prisoners. When they searched us, they found my twenty-three thousand pesos and the arrows. I thought it was my duty to warn the director that they were poisoned-it didn't exactly help our reputations.