Cuenca Ecuador: Crime of Opportunity still threat for expats, travelers

cuencahighlife.com /Martin Simmons

The young man who recently moved to Cuenca from California described how thieves stole his cell phone and $100 in cash the first month he was in town.
Late at night, there are places to be avoided.

Hearing his story, a middle-aged woman from New Jersey, standing next to him at a party I attended last month, chimed in. “My backpack with my passport and credit cards was stolen at Raymipampa last year,” adding: “There’s a crime wave going one here and no one is doing anything about it.”

When I asked about the circumstances of the robbery, the young man said he was walking by the Yanuncay River after midnight on a recent Saturday. He had just left a group of friends who had been partying at a bar on Av. Remigio Crespo. “I was a little wasted, I admit it,” he said.

The woman whose backpack was stolen, said she had hung it over the back of her chair in the restaurant. “I don’t know how they got it since I was sitting right there,” she said. Read Full Article

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