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Things really can happen to you anywhere in the world. You need to take precautions wherever you go, but not be paranoid. My advice is: be humble, take the proper precautions, but most importantly, have fun! Be aware of your surroundings, don't be in dangerous areas late at night, etc....
We can't live our lives in fear. I can't be avoiding certain places just because something MIGHT happen to me. Don't tell me to not visit Mexico and go to Costa Rica instead, or to visit Chile instead of Brazil. The cultures and experiences are soooo different in all of these places! They just don't compare.
Last edited by rosa surf; 12-20-2015 at 10:34 AM..
I work in Tourism area in Rio and can say you're lying. Tourists are hardly victims of violence in Rio. Nowhere in Brazil is really safe, but generally tourists are safe. It's true that they don't have the same freedom that they have in Switzarland, but who comes to Brazil knows it perfectly.
And Rio receives 1/3 of foreing tourists in Brazil alone (and about 10 millions brazilians from other states...), so it's the single place of most significance of the statististics of the 99.99 whole Brazil tourists that don't have one single towel robbed.
Numbers of criminality rates also show most of braziian big cities are a lot more violent than Rio and even São Paulo (General criminality, not related with tourists).
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I am a liar? With all do respect, i would rather trust what i have seen with my eyes than your biased opinion.
"Nowhere in Brazil is really safe" i never said otherwise, i just said that some places are SAFER than others...And that's with every country....And the fact that other cities have more crimes than Rio doesn't make Rio a safe place.
I agree, My mom was born and raised in Nigeria and has lived in that country for 30 or so years although people she knew got robbed, the only time a brazen crime was committed against here was in a Dutch Airport were a European man (MY mom remembers a tallish brown haired man of European descent) stole her handbag right in front of her in the airport. Yet she had never had a brazen crime committed against her in her thirty years in a third world country. From that perspective one may jump to the conclusion that Netherlands has more petty crime to her bag being stolen in a high security location, brazenly in front of everyone. Of course this isn't true and she doesn't believe it's true either but even in the world's most dangerous city 99.99% of people don't get killed or shot in fact 99.998% of people are alive. In fact about the same amount of Americans die from Suicide per capita as Nigerians die from murder per capita (estimated stats/ no recorded murder rate).
For some reason the OP reminds me of the time i spent in Venezuela. I was on an American sport fishing boat there and we would take clients from the states who came down to go marlin fishing as Venezuela has some of the best there is.
Yes, the country had a high murder and crime rate but, just like anywhere, if you kept your guard up, didn't overdress and went around with a local, you'd be fine. Many people were scared to go because of the reputation and they had heard stories of people getting mugged. The funny thing about those stories was that they all involved an "I was walking down the street late at night and was robbed at gunpoint. They took my Rolex and gold chain as well as my money" Um! Hello people. Walking around an impoverished urban area flashing a Rolex and gold. What do you think is going to happen! They're going to start a conversation and ask where they can get one? I always tell people to leave that flashy crap back in the states. At best it will only drive the cost up (increase the "Gringo Tax").
There are tourism ships that travel from Belem to Manaus through the river.
It's a long journey, but it's very beautiful.
Better to go the other way around from Leticia/Tabatinga (the real Amazon) to Manaus then to Belem because it's downstream and much quicker - you save days! The further down the Amazon you go into Brazil, the more urbanized it gets.
It's also cheaper as flights to Bogota from everywhere are dirt cheap ($48 dollars return from Miami, $500 return form London) and a return flight to Leticia is about US $110.
Still only 1 murder and the victim was not gringo.
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and the victim was not gringo.