My track record: one incident in a year of travel
People often ask me: Max, how safe is it really to drive around Latin America?
Here's my experience (Argentina/Paraguay/Uruguay/Brazil/Chile/Peru/Ecuador). In a whole year, I got robbed exactly once — by monkeys. In the jungle, they broke into my snack bag and made off with a bag of chips. Watch your back!
Rule #1: steer clear of the tourist zones in big cities
🌃 Give tourist districts in big cities a wide berth. Locals know that's where the gringo tourists with cash hang out. We stick out like a sore thumb, and the odds of losing a phone or wallet there are fairly high. In Brazilian megacities it can get outright dangerous.
Mountain villages feel safer than European capitals
🗻 It's calm in the mountain villages — locals often don't even lock their doors. Fences are low, no bars on the windows.
The obvious safety rules — don't skip them
😎 And the obvious stuff:
— don't talk on your phone out on the street,
— don't leave valuables sitting on your café table,
— don't drive into slums at night,
— check that your hotel actually has parking (in Cusco, for instance, the streets are so narrow that even five-star hotels can lack parking — I was floored 😳),
— when renting long-term, pick a gated community with security.
Reality is safer than the myths
In my experience, Latin America's danger is overstated — your odds of getting something stolen are roughly the same as in London, Barcelona, or San Francisco.