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I backpacked through El Salvador in 2007. I don’t remember people saying it was particularly dangerous. Honduras was the place I was told to skip, unless you w
by melling 3y ago
I backpacked through El Salvador in 2007. I don’t remember people saying it was particularly dangerous.
Honduras was the place I was told to skip, unless you wanted to scuba in Roatan
There were other backpackers in the hostels.
Even Colombia at that time was fine.
- grecy 3y agoThey all still are fine. I drove the entire pan American highway from Alaska to Argentina from 2009 to 2011. I have dozens of Friends that have done it, and I moderate a Facebook group where thousands are doing it right now. As the marketing for tourism Colombia goes “the only danger is you’ll never want to leave”
- cageface 3y agoThis is absolutely not my experience or the experience of many people I know that have traveled in the region. Latin America is great but the safety concerns are real.
- ks2048 3y agoI've lived in Guatemala for 4.5 years (I'm from the US) and traveled in every country in Central America, and have had only positive experiences. Guatemala is a great country, but difficult for local people because it's hard to make good money. The violence problems are real, but much safer than its reputation, in my opinion.
- someplaceguy 3y agoHmm... possibly a literal survivorship bias at work here? :)
- ks2048 3y agoSure, that's part of it. The stats are the stats - the rest is anecdotes. But, with experience in a place you realize the crime is concentrated to certain places and groups of people.
- noduerme 3y agoFor reference, is it safe now to drive yourself from Antigua to Guatemala City at night? That used to be a dicey proposition.
- cageface 3y agoCrime is a numbers game. And certainly you can improve your odds by be being mindful of where and when you're exploring. I wouldn't let fears of crime discourage anyone from visiting Latin America but compared to many other parts of the world you need to be much more aware of what's going on around you.
- rsync 3y ago"I drove the entire pan American highway from Alaska to Argentina ..." How did you cross that part of Colombia that is impassable and has no road and blah blah blah ? Genuinely curious as I was dissuaded from a similar trip by the supposed inability to go all the way through Columbia.
- ojbyrne 3y agoYou take a ferry. https://www.fodors.com/world/mexico-and-central-america/panama/travel-tips/boat-and-ferry-travel-89526520 https://www.fodors.com/world/mexico-and-central-america/pana...
- schoen 3y agoThat ferry isn't currently operating. (If you follow the link, the operator's site has been replaced with a domain squatter site.) I've read a number of articles about the Darién Gap, and they all indicate that there have been several ferry operators in the past, in some cases for years at a time, but that there's currently no regularly scheduled service. For example, Wikipedia states this several times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap Wikivoyage suggests that you can make it by boat if you're willing to fly part of the way, and/or that you can make private arrangements with a shipping company that can transport cars. https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Darien_Gap https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Darien_Gap My understanding from these and other articles is that people with enough money can buy access to sea transportation for themselves and/or their cars, but that you can no longer just buy a ticket for any kind of regularly scheduled departure. But this could conceivably change again in the future.
- grecy 3y agoI shipped in a shipping container. I documented the whole process here http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-pt-1 http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-pt-...
- flextheruler 3y agoUnfortunately most El Salvadorians are not backpacking through their country for recreation. It’s an assuredly different set of circumstances if you’re living there and from there.