The strange ways smugglers use everyday foods to conceal illegal drugs

In February 2014, just a few days before Guzmán was captured for the second time, it was reported that authorities in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state, seized more than 4,000 cucumbers and plantains stuffed with cocaine.

In another case, a checkpoint in Arizona came across a shipment of marijuana that had been packaged in green plastic with yellow streaks — giving the bundles the appearance of watermelons.

Authorities on the US-Mexico border have also discovered crystal meth hidden in pineapples.

In August 2014, CBP officers at George Bush airport in Houston intercepted nine bags holding 7 ounces of cocaine hidden inside tamales, which were contained in a box of 200 tamales the traveler — a man from El Salvador — didn't disclose to authorities.

Sweets seem to be a source of inspiration for drug traffickers.

Some time in late 2014 or early 2015, Mexico soldiers confiscated packages of donuts covered not in powdered sugar, but instead “were sprinkled with cocaine,” according to BBC Mundo.

In late 2013, authorities in San Andrés Island in Colombia, a popular tourist destination, found almost 2.2 pounds of cocaine hidden in 12 donuts.

Authorities have also came across cakes stuffed with amphetamines, BBC Mundo notes.

At the end of November, CBP agents at the Orlando international airport arrested a man accused of carrying 9.5 pounds of cocaine hidden inside candies.

In 2009, Mexican marines searching a shipment of frozen sharks in Progreso, Yucatán, found packets of cocaine hidden inside the dead fish — "one of the strangest discoveries" yet made, BBC Mundo noted.

The shipment of doped-up sharks was not the only attempt to conceal narcotics in seafood.

According to Radden Keefe, "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel also made use of fish shipments, hoping the nature of the cargo would turn away prying eyes — and noses.

The cartel packaged drugs "in truckloads of fish (which inspectors at a sweltering checkpoint might not want to detain for long)," Radden Keefe wrote.

Not content to just hide cocaine within food items, traffickers have also been caught concealing the drug by changing its physical state.

Officials in Chile seized nearly 4 pounds of cocaine in a cream form hidden inside three shampoo bottles, according to news site BioBioChile.

"It's the first time we have detected drugs in a semi-solid state and with chemical modification to not produce odor," said Ricardo Aceituno, regional customs director in northern Chile.

Aceituno said cocaine had been found in liquid form, hidden in the gas tanks of cars and trucks, "but never in a semi-solid state and with the characteristics of this case."