Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

Putting Travel Safety in Perspective

I’ve been gathering all kinds of fun facts about what’s really risky and what’s not in this world and at some point will get them organized and posted as it relates to travel. But meanwhile, here’s a really sensible, level-headed assessment of the travel safety situation in Honduras.

It’s written by an expat who owns a pizza restaurant and is married to a Honduran woman. He used to work at the U.S. embassy and has been in the country since 1990. So I don’t know many “experts” who can top that—certainly not the ones writing the warnings for the State Department. Go read it, but here’s a great quote from the report:

Two exceptions were Tela and Trujillo, two towns on the north coast where muggers were indeed preying on tourists who were wandering alone in deserted areas after dark, sleeping on the beach, and doing other things worthy of a feature episode of Stupid Things That People Do On Vacation That They Would Never Do At Home. Things have since quieted down, but I do not know if this is because the police have taken care of the muggers or because natural selection has taken care of the stupid travelers.