Live the same

Three photographers went ahead, and Alex and I fell behind. We had already walked quite a distance, and the houses around us began to look more like abandoned construction sites, where people actually lived.

A local guy approached Alex. After a moment, Alex took a few photos, and they started talking. That's when I approached them and heard what they were saying. To my surprise, they spoke English, although Alex spoke pretty decent Spanish.

The whole conversation boiled down to the fact that the local guy wanted to get money for the photos (even though he approached Alex and asked to take his photo). He said: "You're shooting for a magazine! You're getting paid (oh, if only it were true! 😂), so I should get paid too - 100 bucks per photo."

Alex just calmly deleted the photos, showed that he had no more photos, and we moved on...

We kept walking, and the “model” who wanted money for his photo was a bit ahead of us. Three of our friends were still up front, but they were already heading back toward us—it looked like we had reached the end of the neighborhood.

To our right, there was a big yard with a few rundown houses, and a group of about 8-10 guys hanging out, doing something. The "model" stopped near the yard and, probably assuming none of us understood Spanish, started shouting at those guys.

He literally yelled: “Hey, there are five white idiots here with cameras!”

Right at that moment, our three friends caught up with us. Alex immediately said we needed to get out of there—fast. I knew why, but our friends hadn’t figured it out yet, so Alex just grabbed one of them by the hand and quickly started walking back. I didn’t need any convincing.

Meanwhile, the "model" was already talking to those guys, pointing straight at us.