I went down to London for the weekend and met up with a few friends. One of whom was Sue who along with her partner Karl, had recently cut short a backpacking trip through South America because they felt unsafe.

I was surprised at this since my own trip (quite a number of years ago, now) through Bolivia and Brazil had been full of incident but I hadn’t felt particularly unsafe. What struck me about Sue and Karl’s experience was that she cited being mistaken for [North] Americans as the reason for the hostility. Coincidentally, I was chatting with a few people in “The Mason’s Arms” near the Edgware Road yesterday and one bloke called Gary, who happened to be a weblogger, said that the most comments he ever got for any of his blogs, was when a number of Brazilians left some indicating their intense joy at the events of 9-11!

Is South America popping up onto the anti-American radar screens? Probably not, I mean it was just a weekend in London.