Offering help to anyone thinking about a gap year

@JBanks41 -

When I was a teenager back in the 1970’s, my dad used to cut out every article from the newspaper about hitch-hiking where someone had wound up dead or raped or both. I would laugh at him because, seriously, there were plenty of bad things about living in the Bronx in the '70’s but lack of public transportation wasn’t one of them. The concept of hitch-hiking never crossed my mind. About 10 years later, all of those stories melded into one - Ted Bundy!

I agree 100% with Dustyfeathers that hitch-hiking is dangerous no matter where you do it. I have turned into my father…

My neighbor from Columbia was just telling me about a family member who was kidnapped, and that kid napping is a cottage industry there and in parts of Mexico. Another friend of mine, from Ecuador, won’t allow his American wife and children to go to Ecuador without him because of the violent crime.