Roberto Escobar maintains Pablo fell into the drug business simply because other types of contraband became too dangerous to traffic. As there were no drug cartels then and only a few drug barons, Pablo saw it as untapped territory he wished to make his own. In Peru, Pablo would buy the cocaine paste, which would then be refined in a laboratory in a two-story house in Medellín. On his first trip, Pablo bought a paltry of paste in what was noted as the first step towards building his empire. At first he smuggled the cocaine in old plane tires, and a pilot could return as much as US$500,000 worth per flight, depending on the quantity smuggled.