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[tttravdawg]

Hey everyone I have been here in Brazil for a month and i thought i would share my experiences so far.

On the first day that I was in Rio i got robbed. My camera and 70 reis. I was on the Copacbana beach with 3 other brazilians and we were just sitting and talking. the sun was going down but it wasnt yet dark and there were poeple on both sides of us so it felt like a safe situaiton. I dont speak portuguese well so my brazilian friend and I were talking in english. a guy walked by and came up and asked the time. he then crouched down and told the gir I was talking to he had a gun and to tell me to give him my money. He then saw the fear in her eyes and took her money as well as her digital camera. he took my wallet from me took out the 70 reis i had and gave it back to me with the credit card still in it. After finding the camera in my brazilian friends purse he went through my pockets and found my camera. he took it and walked off without taking anything from the other two. I later found out he asked them if they were brazilian and told them to just shut up. the girl I was with was is japanease and had been in the states for a year and a half so everyone was mistaking her for a gringo.

replaying the situation there is so much i wish i would have done. Number 1 is to not have a digital camera on the beach. I had heard the stories a lot of theft happens on the beach but it was my first day and we were just going around the city.
After talking to brazilians and replaying the situation in my head i am quite certain he had no gun. The safe play is to respect any would be theives and to just give them what they want. but saying you have a gun and pointing a gun at someone are worlds apart. This wasnt a dark alley it was on the beach and it wasnt dark yet. there were poeple walking on the boardwalk around 100 yards away. He wasnt incredbly large and looked more scared than I was.

getting robbed on the first day made me very paranoid but since then everything has been fantastic. I have met a lot of great brazilians from rio and they all say they have never heard anything like that. I think it was a combo of bad luck (wrong place) and bad descions (should have left the beach while it was still sunny, shouldnt have had my camera.) its funny you read all of these things and then you get here get caught up in the moment and forget everything you have read...or at least thats what i did.

I hope this doesnt change anyones plans to go to brazil. It is a beautiful country and the people who dont rob you are great. well i had planned on writing about my whole month here but have spent too much time on the robbery. perhaps I will write aobut my more postive brazilian experiences later.

[PKB]

Hey, that's unfortunate. I was in Rio in mid November, too. I didn't get robbed, but ran into plenty of scammers. About 50% of taxi driver tried to go unmetered or put the meter in position 2 when they weren't supposed to. Call 'em on it quick.

And as far as I can tell 100% of shoe shine guys are bad news. Stay away from 'em. They are either working with an accomplice trying to put junk on your shoes, so that they can clean them, or trying to clean your shoes without you asking and then trying to charge you $25 US for it. One of them even put his hand on my pocket with my wallet in it, but I caught him and yelled at him. Chase 'em off.

We ran into a police shakedown point while driving, my driver knew on of the officers and so we passed right by,. Good thing because I didn't have any (mandatory) ID on me. A German guy I knew got robbed for $40 bucks by the police well north of Rio.

I did run across a guy with a gun in Rocinha, he didn't mug us or anything, he was just walking around with a gun and his finger on the trigger.

So I made it out without being robbed or scammed, but the scammers were definately trying to work it.

[micropiglet]

Sorry to hear about the mugging! Pretty bad luck I reckon.
I spent a year in Brazil, and much of that time was spent in the backwoods, including a little teaching in Sao Luis. I sometimes found myself in seriously questionable places, sometimes in the middle of the night, but nothing bad ever happened. Since then I have taught in Cambodia, where my wife was robbed of everything on the street, and am currently workling a long term contract in Malaysia, which is filled with stories of petty crime and muggings, but, touch wood, nothing has happened to me or my wife. We have been here a year now.
I guess shit happens all over. Certainly parts of Asia are scary. I think Rio can be a scary place too, but it just sounds like crappy luck. Don't let it put you off! We left Cambodia after the mugging, never to return, but then that was Cambodia, and there is little there to stay for! Brazil is a different matter!

[shaner]

Rio is a lovely city, but I wouldn't live there. I remember feeling unsafe. Too many sex tourists as well. I prefer the norhteast or the south.

I actually never had a problem in Sao Paulo. Who knows.