At 2am, my alarm goes off. The room is still entirely dark, no light coming in from the lonely street. I pick myself up and quietly open the door of my room. I’m taken aback by a moment of instant realization as I see my host and her husband sleeping on a mattress on the living-room floor.  I guess this isn’t the guest room.

Twelve hour earlier, I had never met Tatiana or any of the seemingly countless relatives that live with her in a lovely house in the northern residential section of Guayaquil. I had met her brother, Robert, a handful of times through running in Quito, and in conversation about my trip to Guayaquil, I had simply asked if he had arranged hospedaje – or where he was going to stay. A couple days later, he informed me that he had been sidelined with an injury, but that I should stay with his sister, Tatiana.

And so, I find myself hopping off an eleven-hour bus ride from the high and dry sierra of Quito to the steamy, tropical metropolis of Guayaquil and trying to explain to a taxista the address of the house where I’ll be staying.

“So, you know where this address is?” he asks me.

“Well, no… I actually haven’t been here before,” I answer.

“But your friend, you know what she looks like if she comes out to meet us?” he replies, confused.

“Um, well, actually I haven’t met her in person just yet…”

He chuckles knowingly and we drive through the darkening streets until arriving at a corner where a friendly, young woman is waiting for us. As soon as I step out of the cab, I can sense her warmth and her true desire to make me feel at home. We walk a few blocks to her home and she shows me to a room – the one I would later find out was her and her husband’s – where I set down my bag and breathe out the long sigh of the weary traveler.

Within a few minutes, Tatiana asks me if I want if I want to get dinner. I explain that I’ve already eaten, but not wanting to turn down the opportunity to spend some time with my new hosts, I say that a walk and a snack sound great.

We walk through their quiet neighborhood to a local yogurt bar where Tatiana doesn’t even let me think about paying, despite my best intent. As we walk, I explain the logistics of the next morning, with the race starting at 5am, I’ll need to get a taxi around 3:45am to get me to the starting area in time. Apologizing for the early hour and hoping I won’t wake any of them up, Tatiana cuts me off.

“No, no, no – you should not take a taxi at this hour,” she says. “We will take you in the car.”

I immediately feel guilty for even bringing it up, explaining again how early I need to leave and that I couldn’t possibly impose that on anyone – it seems pretty awful even to me. But she stands firm; there’s nothing I can do to change her mind.

 

Ten hours later, I’m passing the 15km marker (just before 10 miles) in the Guayaquil Half Marathon. I’ve been running alone in first place for several miles and seeing the split, I know I’m on pace for an incredible time – possibly a new personal best. The feeling of a good race is hard to describe. Like my best races in college, I had spent the early miles relaxed, the middle miles accelerating, and the last few miles just pushing, but knowing I had it in me. I know I’m going to close well; I know I’m going to win.  I am unstoppable.

Then, everything changes. First, a tiny side-stich. A bit abnormal as I almost never cramp, but it’ll go away.

It doesn’t. Before I reach 16km, the tiny cramp has migrated all over my lower torso and I’m holding my stomach, retching, overcome with nausea and trying to keep my feet moving.

The engine stops. Suddenly, I’m more concerned with how I’m going to get to a hospital from all the way out here than finishing the race (could this be appendicitis?). I’ve never stopped in a race, let alone dropped out, but this is simply not normal. I stop and look down at the side of the road, frustrated, disappointed, and angry.

I’ve had food poisoning before, but I’d foolishly thought that I’d become immune from living here for so long. I’m past that whole “getting sick” thing, right? That’s just for tourists, right?

Usually, this kind of sickness has me in bed for a day or two, maybe nibbling on some bread or plain rice, but mostly doing nothing and wishing the hands on the clock would spin more quickly. Was my sickness inevitable or did I put myself at risk by eating something particular? Would I have gotten sick either way or, in this case, did it manifest itself from my pushing my body to its extremes? I have long since stopped trying to pinpoint one particular culprit – a glass of juice, some old cheese, a cheap but delicious meal bought on a street-corner out of a cardboard box. The endless and answerless search will just drive you crazy.

 

These things happen. This has become something of my personal mantra while living in South America. Whether it’s the weird (a man coming onto you bus to sell a holistic cure for tapeworms), the crazy (getting lifted up in the air by drunken men at futbol matches), the good (the amazing hospitality and kindness of the people), and the bad (the occasional – and sometimes incredibly poorly timed – crippling bouts of stomach distress), you can’t get one without the others. South America – like anyone and anywhere – arrives with some strings attached.

My trip to Guayaquil perfectly manifested the two sides of the South American coin. What would have been a fantastic race was ruined by a bout of food poisoning, which maybe wouldn’t have happened in the US. But at the same time, I was met with unprecedented warmth and friendship from people I hardly knew in an unknown city. An aside – after Tatiana and her husband drove me to the race at 4am, they stood around (in what was for them the freezing cold), cheering me on and then taking me out to breakfast and a wonderful home-cooked lunch with their entire family. And I did survive – even jogging in the last 5km and finishing the race in 3rd. After an uncomfortable ride back to Quito, the illness passed within a day (as usual) and I was back on the horse. My appendix is fine.

These things happen. My mantra reflects my belief that the benefits outweigh the costs, the rewards are worth the risk. Things happen in South America and things happen in the US. To me, the sum of those things – good and bad – is the reason that I now call South America my home.