Summer worries

Worse than sending my camera to a concert for two days with a very expirienced photographer, though, will be lugging it along with me to Peru this summer. Expensive cameras were about the only thing they told us not to bring, and they have perfectly good reasons to advise against it. I've never been "mugged" but I don't like the sound of it. Pickpocketing sounds childish and suggests something petty and relatively harmless, but this cannot be said for mugging. I have a feeling that I will find myself walking up to the first five suspicious people I see, extending the camera bag and pleading, "Take it, take it all, but please don't mug me!" This could be embarassing, especially if they quietly told me they didn't want my camera. Then I might be offended.
I'm thinking of taking out a month-long insurance policy on it, but this will still be little consolation in the event that I am mugged. I will only get a new camera at the end, and any pictures I'd taken on the trip will still be lost, just as if I'd never been stupid enough to bring the camera with me to Lima in the first place. I wonder if muggers are a cooperative sort of people. Surely they will negotiate, although I'm not very imposing. Maybe the first day of the trip I can rope one of the few guys going on the trip into negotiating for me. But that'd be like two insurance policies, and two weeks in Peru is two weeks without a paycheck.