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Capetown, South Africa. Usually fine here but one night we stayed out far too late at a bar and had to walk back to our place, there was nobody on the streets except for crazy looking homeless people. We even had one local we passed mention to us not to look anyone in the eye. Didn't like that much.
We once had a taxi take a short cut in San Salvador that got us really stressed out. We knew not to jump in random taxis there so found a lady running a little hotel to call her brother who had a taxi. About halfway back he turned off the main street into dark alleys and I was pretty sure we were about to meet some of his friends and lose our wallets but after five minutes we popped out the other side, he was just avoiding the one-way street more efficiently.
Nairobi, wife and I took wrong turn walking after movie back to hotel. Party street, lots of the wrong kind of people hanging out, loud soukous boom boxes, already lots of drinkng. Wife stayed calm, but I could smell her aura of fear. Went to middle of street and walked out to a safer street.
I can think of a dozen times, in retrospect, I should have felt unsafe, but had no idea then what may have been lurking.
Hitched a lift in a truck to the Rwanda border that dropped off about 20 men just before the border, whom I assumed were farm workers. While stamping into Rwanda, the men in wet clothes came out of the jungle -- they had just crossed the river to escape the Idi Amin regime. Had there been a tip-off, the whole truck might have been machine-gunnrd.
Seattle, a couple of years ago. Parts of the city (around Pioneer square and the light rail) seem to belong to the sketchy and homeless after hours. We inadvertently stayed out past "the witching hour" and had a worrisome ride back to the hotel.
Last year in San Francisco when walking to Civic Centre from our hotel.
In Washington DC in 1995 walking to and from our hotel.
In 1977 when we drove from the freeway into the Bronx and it looked like a war zone.
Driving across a bridge in the former Yugoslavia in 1977 and discovering that there was a huge hole in the bridge and just enough space for our campervan to squeeze past.
In Western Australia years ago when an enormous kangaroo very nearly jumped into our car. Ended up shearing off the side mirror.
In Sicily a few years ago when our navigator led us along a narrow road to a cliff and we did not know if we could get out of there.
Driving along the road from Como in Italy to Bellagio.
Unsafe new Orleans. It was 3pm my husband and I were day drinking soaking up the French Quarter when we got lost. We passed this elderly black man on some stairs in front of an old building.
As we were about to pass him walking, he obstructed our way with his cane.
Point blank he told us, " ya'll need to turn around right about now if you know what's good for ya."
We asked why. He replied, " his color might cause some problems in there. Turn around and go back and the won't bother your kind."
That was around 2003.
Safe Jerusalem Saturday night on Ben Yehuda St.
Not a care in the world surrounded by festivity, joy, and peace.
2017
Where is the world (a city, a nation) did you feel most unsafe or in danger?
How and why did you feel unsafe?
I think it was Dec. 1971, and it was in the St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I was staying at a hotel on an island in the harbour. I took the launch in and wandered around the town - with no knowledge of the town, which was very foolish. A black woman in a small store where I stopped to buy cigarettes was extremely hostile and did not want to sell to me, and in the street twice black men in passing trucks shouted racial epithets. On the last day of my vacation I went to a club and ran into a black fellow who had been the head waiter at an informal restaurant where I ate twice. He was with his girlfriend and invited me to sit with them. They were from Antigua, and he said that Antiguans who came to St. Croix were often harassed and attacked.
Later that same year several tourists were killed in an attack on a golf course club in St. Croix.
The only other place was on my block of W. 80th St. in Manhattan in the early 70s. You never turned right when you left the building after dark and walked the length of the block, you always turned left and walked down the avenue to the next street. Having non-white skin was no pass either. My super was a dark African-American and when I moved in he gave me the above advice, and pointing to his black skin said, "Even I do not walk down the block after dark." He was killed in our building later on.
8000' up in the Sierras, early July, 6-8' of snow, crossing streams which were either swollen with snow melt or covered with said snow and slowly being hollowed out by flowing water below and an unknown thickness of snow remaining...
We were scuba diving in Maui and the dive master showed us the sign for shark. He said if he made that sign we should go back to back to watch it. It was a shore dive early in the morning when sharks feed. I wasn't too concerned until a couple of days later when someone was killed off of that same beach from either a great white or tiger shark. I did not want to go back into the ocean after that.
We got lost on the West side of Chicago. The GPS took us right into the heart of one of the worst parts of the city. This was in the winter and there were helicopters flying over head, cop cars with lights and sirens everywhere and lots of people everywhere. I thought for sure we were going to be car jacked.
I had a similar experience in my 20's after visiting a friend with my bike for a nice lake shore ride. I took a wrong turn and wound up on a street with a very large housing project. I had my bike in the bed of our pick up and had to drive for about a mile or two in a sketchy area. I made it to the end and the road I wanted to take was closed. My only option was to go back through the area and find where I should have turned instead. The sun was going down and people were all over the place. I didn't stop for any red lights or stop signs. I just lingered far enough back from the corners until I had a green light or could see that there was no traffic at the stop signs. It was pretty scary but not as scary as being in the Taylor housing project on a winter night. That was intense.
We were in the Bahamas when I had a "female emergency" late one night. I had to take a cab into some small places to find what I needed, and I had to go to multiple stores. That was an adventure.
Twenty-five years of living in Miami -- I never felt safe. In the days of the Cocaine Cowboys, the average was a murder a day.
Ironically, other Miami residents expressed concern when I told them I was planning a trip to Israel. I've now been to Israel five times, and I've never felt safer anywhere else in the world than I do in Israel.
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