How Safe Is Ecuador for Solo Travellers? My Honest Experience

I went to Ecuador knowing about the gangs, murders and television-station attack. On my first night in Quito, I lay awake listening to sirens and wondered whether everyone who had warned me not to go had been right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNX1t2L-OZE

CBS News Report on News Broadcast take over

Then I met Ecuador.

Not the country I'd watched on the news.

The people who actually lived there.

And those are two very different things.

Everyone Had Told Me Ecuador Was Dangerous

By the time I travelled to Ecuador in 2025, I'd already been warned plenty of times.

Ecuador's security crisis had become international news.

The images from January 2024 were difficult to forget. Armed men had stormed the studios of TC Televisión in Guayaquil during a live broadcast, taking journalists and staff hostage on camera. President Daniel Noboa subsequently declared that Ecuador was in an “internal armed conflict” with organised criminal groups.

Military personnel were deployed internally. Prisons were at the centre of violent confrontations. Kidnappings, extortion and gang violence were being reported internationally.

And although the government reported a fall in violent deaths during 2024, the improvement didn't last. Violence increased dramatically again during 2025. In the first seven months alone, Ecuador recorded more than 5,000 homicides — around 40% more than during the equivalent period in 2024.

So when people warned me about Ecuador, they weren't inventing the danger.

It was real.

The famous statue in Quito, Ecuador, is the Virgin of El Panecillo

But that was partly why I wanted to go.

Not because I wanted to find danger.

I'd wanted to visit South America, but I was also going to Ecuador to volunteer with children in a community in South Quito.

And there was something else underneath it.

I'd grown up in London hearing people describe places as rough.

Sometimes they were right.

There was danger.

But I knew what it felt like when somebody who didn't live somewhere reduced an entire community to the worst things they'd heard about it.

The uncomfortable truth is that I'd done exactly the same thing myself.

There were other parts of London I judged because I was the outsider.

That's one of the reasons I want to see the world.

I don't want somebody else to tell me what a place and its people are like.

I want to go and see for myself.

My First Night in Quito Didn't Exactly Reassure Me

India had already taught me an important lesson about arriving somewhere unfamiliar.

Have a plan.

So when I landed in Quito late at night, I didn't wander outside the airport looking for transport or decide that midnight was an excellent time to start exploring.

I ordered an Uber.

Went directly to my hotel.

Ordered a takeaway.

Locked the door.

Sensible.

Then I went to bed.

And throughout the night I could hear sirens outside.

Every time another one passed, the warnings I'd heard before leaving came back.

Maybe this really is as dangerous as everyone says.

Nothing actually happened to me that night.

But the reputation South America has for danger was sitting firmly at the front of my mind.

And when you're expecting danger, every siren sounds like evidence.

Then I Arrived in La Michelena

The following day I was collected and taken to the house where I'd be staying while volunteering.

There were other travellers there.

Some were experiencing Ecuador for the first time. Others had visited recently. Some had first come to the country twenty years earlier. Others had already been living around La Michelena for some time.

Suddenly, I wasn't relying entirely on headlines anymore.

I could ask people.

Then came my first day volunteering in the market.

And honestly?

It was intense.

Volunterring in La Michelena

La Michelena is in the south of Quito, away from the version of the city most international tourists experience. It's a major local commercial area filled with shops, traders, food and everyday neighbourhood life.

Then I arrived.

A 6'4" gringo.

Barely able to speak Spanish.

And everybody seemed to be staring at me.

People were shouting.

Conversations were happening around me faster than I could understand them.

Traders were doing what traders do.

Everything felt loud.

Busy.

Chaotic.

And because danger was already in my head, it would have been incredibly easy to interpret that unfamiliarity as threatening.

But slowly, something changed.

Not the market.

Me.

People Are People

I was working with children, and over time I started earning their trust.

They got to know me.

I got to know them.

My Spanish slowly improved.

I could communicate a little more.

Smile.

Make jokes.

Understand what people were saying to me.

And as my relationship with the children grew, I felt my relationship with the adults around them changing too.

They could see this enormous foreigner who couldn't really speak Spanish and didn't entirely know what he was doing.

But they could also see why I was there.

I'd turned up with little more than good intentions and a smile.

Eventually, the faces that had seemed to be staring at the gringo stopped feeling like strangers.

They became people.

That sounds ridiculously obvious.

But I think it's something we forget constantly.

People are people.

I genuinely believe that most people are good-intentioned at their core.

That doesn't mean people don't do terrible things.

They obviously do.

But I think much of the hatred and behaviour that divides us is taught rather than something we're naturally born wanting to inflict upon one another.

Travelling hasn't made me believe everybody is good.

It has made me more determined to look for the good first.

My approach now is basically:

I'm going to kill you with kindness and make it bloody difficult for you to dislike me.

Ecuador reinforced that.

“Ten Cuidado”

There was, however, one phrase I heard constantly:

“Ten cuidado.”

Be careful.

Leave a restaurant?

Ten cuidado.

Get dropped somewhere by a taxi?

Ten cuidado.

Go out in the evening?

Ten cuidado.

Our shared accommodation repeatedly reminded us not to go wandering around drinking, not to stay out late and ideally to be home by around 10pm.

The reminders meant that danger never completely disappeared from my mind.

Even when I was becoming more comfortable, somebody would remind me to be careful.

And weirdly, sometimes that made me more likely to speak to people.

I'd talk to somebody in a bar.

Talk to somebody on a bus.

Talk to people in the street.

Partly because I wanted local information.

But looking back, I think I was also doing something else.

I was reinforcing my own belief that people were good.

The more strangers became individuals, the harder it became to be frightened of an anonymous mass of dangerous people.

Eventually, I developed another question:

“¿Tranquilo o peligroso?”

Calm or dangerous?

That distinction became much more useful.

Someone telling me ten cuidado didn't necessarily mean:

Don't go there.

It could mean watch your phone.

Know how you're getting home.

Don't wander around drunk at 2am.

Don't advertise an expensive camera.

Essentially, behave like you're in a major city.

But if someone genuinely thought somewhere was peligroso?

I listened.

AFFILIATE LINK: Spanish Phrasebook / Language Resource Learning even basic Spanish completely changed my experience of Ecuador. Then Otavalo Tested the Theory

And then there was Otavalo.

This is inevitably the story everyone remembers when I tell them about Ecuador.

I was staying overnight in the town, famous for its Indigenous market and the surrounding Andean scenery.

At about two in the morning, I woke up.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Someone was hammering on my hotel-room door.

Not politely knocking.

Banging.

Then I heard voices in the corridor.

“¡Gringo! ¡Gringo!”

More banging.

More shouting.

I stayed exactly where I was.

Then I heard another voice.

Quieter.

“No. El gringo es muy alto. Muy grande.”

No. The gringo is very tall. Very big.

Fortunately, my Spanish had improved enough for me to understand that sentence perfectly.

Apparently being 6'4" had finally become a practical travel skill.

The group moved away.

Nobody got inside.

Nobody returned.

I never opened that door.

And I am 100% certain that I felt in danger.

What I'm not certain about is what they actually wanted.

Maybe they wanted to rob me.

Maybe they wanted the giant gringo to come drinking with them.

Maybe they wanted to harvest my organs.

We'll never know.

And I wasn't opening the door to conduct further research.

Otavalo Market

It was scary.

I'm not going to retrospectively soften it because nothing eventually happened.

Equally, I'm not going to claim I fought off an armed gang when I don't actually know who was outside.

The honest version is frightening enough.

I believed I was in danger.

I kept the door locked.

Eventually, they went away.

Would I return to Otavalo?

Yes.

Would I stay overnight again?

Probably not.

I'd visit the market, photograph the town and enjoy the mountains.

Then I'd head back to Quito.

Being Scared Didn't Make Me Stop Believing in People

The strange thing is that Otavalo didn't fundamentally change how I felt about Ecuadorians.

Because believing that people are generally good doesn't mean believing every individual is good.

And believing in the goodness of people certainly doesn't mean ignoring risk.

Growing up in London had already taught me that those things can exist simultaneously.

I've known people who could genuinely be dangerous.

Some of those same people could also display extraordinary kindness.

Human beings aren't particularly good at fitting into the simple categories we create for them.

Good person.

Bad person.

Safe place.

Dangerous place.

Reality is messier.

A place can contain danger without everyone who lives there being dangerous.

And somebody capable of doing something bad isn't necessarily incapable of doing something good.

That doesn't excuse harmful behaviour.

It simply means people are complicated.

Countries are too.

The Taxi Driver Who Wouldn't Take My Money

And that's why the story that defines Ecuador for me isn't Otavalo.

It's a taxi driver in Quito.

While volunteering, I regularly used the same driver.

At the end of a journey, I'd try to pay him.

He'd refuse.

At first, I thought there had been some misunderstanding.

Then he did it again.

And again.

Eventually, he explained himself.

When he was a child, he'd worked around the same market where I was now volunteering.

Years earlier, foreign volunteers had come into his community and helped teach local children English.

He had been one of those children.

And he believed the English he'd learnt had helped create opportunities for him later in life.

Now, years later, another foreign volunteer was working with children in the same community.

Me.

So he didn't want my money.

My last day volunteering in South Quito.

I understood why it meant something to him.

But my reaction was basically:

Don't be silly. You don't owe me anything.

Because that's not why I was there.

I don't believe charity should create debt.

And I don't think you should help somebody because you expect validation for being the person who helped.

You shouldn't need gratitude.

You shouldn't need repayment.

You shouldn't even need the person you've helped to remember your name.

You do it because you want there to be a little more good in the world than there was before.

In every corner of it.

So naturally, I continued trying to pay him.

He continued refusing.

I started hiding money between the seats of his taxi before getting out.

Sometimes I thought I'd finally won.

Then I'd see him again and he'd return it.

Sometimes he'd just laugh at me.

It became an ongoing battle.

I don't think I ever won.

But looking back, there's something beautiful about what he was trying to do.

Someone had helped him without knowing what that act might eventually mean.

Years later, he wanted to pass that kindness back.

And I was there trying desperately to make sure he didn't feel he had to.

The Ecuador on the News Was Real

This is the point where it would be very easy to write:

“The media was wrong about Ecuador.”

It wasn't.

The security crisis was real when I travelled there.

Ecuador's homicide rate increased significantly again during 2025, with organised criminal groups continuing to fight over territory and drug-trafficking routes.

My experiences don't disprove that.

And the fact that Ecuadorians were overwhelmingly kind to me doesn't make crime statistics disappear.

The mistake would be using those statistics to describe an entire population.

So, Is Ecuador Safe for Solo Travellers?

I don't think “yes” or “no” is an adequate answer.

Would I travel around Ecuador solo again?

Absolutely.

Would I behave as though the security problems don't exist?

Absolutely not.

I used Ubers. I listened to Ecuadorians. I thought about where I was going and how I was getting home. When people told me somewhere was genuinely dangerous, I listened.

Kindness isn't a safety strategy.

But neither is fear.

Current UK travel advice identifies specific parts of Ecuador where the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office advises against all but essential travel, alongside precautions for travellers elsewhere in the country.

The security situation can change quickly, so check the latest official advice before travelling rather than relying on my experience from 2025.

EXTERNAL LINK: Current FCDO Ecuador Travel Advice

I Want to See for Myself

I think this is ultimately why I travel.

Growing up in London, I'd sometimes get annoyed when people called where I came from rough.

They weren't necessarily wrong.

There was danger.

But I knew the people who lived there, and I knew that wasn't the whole story.

The uncomfortable part is that I've done exactly the same thing myself.

I've judged other parts of London because, this time, I was the outsider.

It's incredibly easy to do that with the world.

We hear enough about a neighbourhood, a city or a country and eventually the reputation becomes the people.

I don't want to do that.

That's why I want to see the world for myself.

Not because I think travelling will prove everything I've heard wrong.

Ecuador certainly didn't.

Some of the frightening things I'd been told were real.

But so were the children who learnt to trust me.

So were the people who told me ten cuidado because they wanted me to get home safely.

And so was a taxi driver who wouldn't accept my money because somebody had once shown him kindness.

[IMAGE: Strongest human photograph from Ecuador / volunteering photograph]

Maybe that's what I was trying to prove every time I started talking to somebody on a bus or in a bar.

That people are people.

And that, given the opportunity, I'd rather meet them before I decide who they are.

I don't want someone else to tell me what the world is like.

I want to see it for myself.

Planning Your Own Ecuador Adventure?

INTERNAL LINK: 3 Days in Mindo: Waterfalls, Cloud Forests & Hummingbirds

My experience exploring Mindo's cloud forest, waterfalls, wildlife and meeting the street dog I temporarily adopted.

INTERNAL LINK: Volunteering in Quito: The Honest Truth About Helping Abroad]

What volunteering in South Quito taught me about charity, communities and travelling with good intentions.

AFFILIATE LINK: Spanish Phrasebook / Language Resource Learning even basic Spanish completely changed my experience of Ecuador.

My experience in this article is from travelling in Ecuador in 2025. Security conditions can change rapidly. Always check current official travel advice before making travel decisions.