And get the latest travel inspiration straight to your inbox! Don't be shy, it's going to be fun! By submitting you agree to the storage of your data for sending you the newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time. Read more. Rio de Janeiro is so dangerous! I tried not to laugh too much. Dark favelas, drug gangs, shootouts and an eternal war between special forces of the military, police and gangsters, where good and evil are not necessarily always who they seem to be.
Rising crime everywhere. A foreign word in Rio de Janeiro. Every day the news are full of muggings, flash kidnappings in the open street and tourists being robbed blind. At the same time, it seems to me that a certain carelessness in Rio de Janeiro with regards to crime is out of place. I remembered the story of some fellow crew member in Mexico City.
Just like that someone pulled it of his wrist. May be one of our legends in aviation, but still: You get the advice all the time to wear as little jewelry as possible or better, no jewelry at all.
This is also one of the reasons why I rather prefer to travel alone in Southeast Asia than in Brazil. Here you are largely spared from street crime and sinister characters. I wish I could write here that there is nothing at all to worry about in Rio, and that everything is pure exaggeration if you are not wandering the favelas on your own.
However, I can remember a moment when I was walking in the evening through Santa Teresa , the new in district for creative people in Rio de Janeiro. I had moved into an Airbnb there, next to the German consulate, which is guarded around the clock. Calmed me down a bit. Not many drivers would feel like going up and down the winding roads in Santa Teresa.
