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THE HORSE WHISPERER

intercepted and raided a ship passing the Brazilian coastline and two container loads of pineapple tins, stuffed with 20 tonnes of marijuana, had been thrown overboard to evade arrest. For Andre, it was like Christmas and the catalyst to a new, decadent life. Alone.

One day I have an old car, I put shrimps inside it and go to São Paulo to sell them to make money. The next day I have $108,000 in marijuana, I buy a new car and I park it in my house in São Paulo. My dad just looks at me, he looks at the car, he doesn’t say anything. We have dinner with the family; afterwards he calls me to his office and says, ‘Andre, I know you are a drug dealer. I know you have a lot of cans in the beach house. You have two days to clear them out.’

My father is a harbour man, a hard man. He has three really nice daughters; he doesn’t need a crazy guy around. He tells me, ‘If you want to live in this house, you can live here. Stop doing this and you can keep your family. But if you want to be a drug dealer, please, get out.’ So I’m 19 years old, $100,000 in my pocket, he gives me the option. I go straight to California.

He was soon a busy LA drug dealer, selling cocaine, LSD and marijuana, often roller-skating along the Venice Beach esplanade with a bag of gear. He’d hooked up with a bunch of surfers, mostly Mexicans and Brazilians, who were sharing a condominium. The Mexicans were smuggling drugs across the border from Tijuana, so drugs were on tap. Andre spent his days selling and surfing, with regular trips down to Hawaii to ride the big waves. Before long, he joined the fast flow of surfers to Bali.

At 22, with a backpack slung over his shoulder, packed full of clothes and LSD, he walked into the surfers’ haunt, the Aquarius Hotel, situated on the main street in Kuta. This was Andre’s first

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