Near Death Tourism

After our first day in Peru and Pisco sours, we awoke at 6:30 the next morning to the abusive clamor of the alarm clock. It was our fault of course. After our claustrophobic, semi-disasterous run the day before, we thought we might try to beat the crowds by starting ou r run earlier. Results of our experience were mixed--less crowds on the sidewalks, but the same crush of traffic on the streets, obliging us to stop and start constantly. There may have been fewer people out, but the ones that were, looked at us as though we were just as crazy as we had been the day before.
Then we made our big mistake. I can claim partial credit for our adventure because it had been my initial suggestion that we run to the top of the large hill with the cross which stood about four-hundred feet above the city. Ben had had the wisdom to see that the neighborhood was a bad idea from the start, but Max and I though that it would at least be worth checking out. After all, who could resist such a hill, with its sides colorful with shanties, nestled in the mystery of the Lima smog? To be sure, we forsaw the potential for challenges ahead, but we runners are a defiant breed, especially those of us that are members of the North American Distance Squad.
We set across the bridge at the foot of the hill and entered a world of poverty and despair unmatched by any that I had seen before. Compared to this, even the dire outskirts of Schenectady would look like Beverly Hills. The streets were dirt, filled with wandering dogs and excrement. The sour diesel fumes from motorbikes and busses had sex with the odor of human waste to germinate a choking stench that crushed the breath out of my lungs. Everywhere, there were people in rags lying against sheet-metal walls. None of them had signs begging for money like you might see in New York because no one would have any to give them.
I feel particularly inept at making any value judgements outside of my own reaction to what I saw. I should say that we barely scratched the surface of the slums. We retreated in the face of a sense of not belonging; a bunch of goofy Americans running in short-shorts should not be in such a place. People looked at us as they had in Central Lima but did not shout. Perhaps it was because of their amazement that anyone could be so stupid. The roads we left not traveled, the ones leading to the top of the hill, were narrow and clogged with garbage, picked over by hordes of marauding dogs.
As we ran away, we cut through an open-air market which seemed curiously out of place. It was beautiful in that it had trucks filled with flowers. Who the hell buys flowers in a place like this? There were also crates of chickens, and crowded stands peddling Inca Kolas and junk food. Most of this place was too packed to run through, so we walked akwardly through it all, trying in vain not to look conspicuos.
If there was any lesson I could derive from our foray onto The Other Side, it was that in those circumstances, I would do anything: lie, cheat or steal to get the hell out of that kind of place. Often people do, and who can really blame them. We certainly ran out of there in a hurry.