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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

And don't forget the Ecuadorean kidnapping industry. I know a guy who was kidnapped four times (his family owns a banana plantation in Ecuador)

A friend of mine knows a guy in Columbia with no fingernails. He was kidnapped for 18 months, they wanted him to reveal the real owner of some land where his name was on the title. They removed his fingernails one by one.

That puts a bit of a damper on my own enthusiasm for South America. An uber driver from Brazil once asked me how I liked Brazil and I said "it was fun to visit, but what about all the kidnappings?"

And he said "Oh, so you know what's going on"

Yeah I do. Really it's not a region to visit carelessly.

(I travel a lot, I'm in India now)

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If you are just a tourist who does not own the title to a banana plantation or anything like that, are you still at risk?

My experience is that you don't. Ecuador is a lot of fun.

That said, you should always be careful. In Ecuador, particularly in Guayaquil, be careful what taxi you take. Make sure it has a meter, and if possible use a radio dispatched taxi (i.e. call). Beyond that, it's like most places you're likley to visit: Stay away from "bad" areas late at night, be aware of your surroundings, etc.

The only foreigners that I constantly see getting themselves into trouble are those who deliberately come down here to do the things that they can't easily get away with in their own countries.

My scariest travelling experience was in Quito. I was walking up the steps to the statue of the virgin Mary, which the guide book recommended gave a great view.

About a third of the way up, some girls aged about 10 shouted some Spanish to me. I only understood "tu muertas", and after some confusion returned to the hostel.

Apparently, the path goes through a slum, and it's pretty dangerous -- the police don't go there. My guidebook was out of date!

An Ecuadorian tourist I met didn't have a camera, since it had been stolen shortly before his holiday. He seemed to think this was pretty routine.

"tu muertas"???? What does that even mean? You obviously don't understand any spanish at all. LOL

Please don't be rude on Hacker News.

I apologize if you and others felt offended by my comment, but I feel even more offended when I see people who are ignorant and insensitive to other cultures throw random gibberish and try to pass it off as fact. "tu muertas" doesn't translate into anything if you look it up in a dictionary. Perhaps the op was consumed by his/her own prejudice that a misheard/misunderstood statement from a 10 year old girl felt like a death threat??

I understand enough French and Latin (and have watched The Pirates of the Caribbean) to know that the word for "die" in Spanish will sound something like "mourir", but with a different ending.

Google Translate says "morirás". Can a "tú" be added for emphasis? (That's how pronouns work in Latin.) The girl was very anxious.

She was also holding a squashed plastic bottle, and making slashing motions across her throat. One of the other girls was doing the same to her leg.

The most recent review on TripAdvisor [1] says "My travel buddy and I got mugged by 3 street hoods with a knife on the steps going back down into Quito".

The British government [2] says, of Ecuador, "Muggings and pick pocketing are very common ... avoid travelling to ‘El Panecillo’ hill on your own or by foot"

Can you think of an alternative explanation?

[1] https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g294308-d315612-...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/ecuador/safety-and-...

I didn't feel offended; it's my job (I'm a moderator here) to ask people to stay civil.

I'd probably find it insulting too if someone acted like a little girl was making death threats when in reality it was they who didn't understand her/my language. But the comment never said that. I read it that the girl was trying to protect him, and the phrase in broken Spanish was what he heard—which of course would be in broken Spanish, since he doesn't speak the language. In other words, the comment was honoring the little girl, not insulting her.

It dampens your enthusiasm for the whole of South America? The threat of kidnapping can't be so bad everywhere. How about French Guiana, which is a department of France and in the EU? And some of my colleagues describe exploring stunningly beautiful areas in national parks in Brazil and Argentina, where the few people they encountered were mostly other European scientists and photographers.

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