Comment by ivanhoe

It's definitely not "relatively safe" in what I as a European would consider a safe place - although I was told it got a lot better in the last decade. If you look like a rich tourist than you need to be careful, like pretty much anywhere in S. America. However if you present yourself as a nomad hippie looser with nothing worth the trouble of messing with you, you can go around and probably you'll have no big problems, but still requires a bit of common sense in interaction with people. And speaking at least some Spanish. It's not that people are not friendly, they're just poor, and the line between being friendly and hustling you is very thin.