About Kakapo

Travel-safety help that respects your time and your intelligence. Real research, real cities, no scaremongering.

Why we built this

Trying to find honest safety information before a trip is genuinely exhausting. Half the internet tells you the world is on fire. The other half tells you everywhere is basically fine if you "use common sense." Both are useless when you actually need to decide whether to book the hostel in Lapa or stay in Ipanema instead.

We wanted the version a friend who'd actually been there would give you: specific neighbourhoods, what locals actually do at night, the scams that are real versus the ones travel forums repeat from 2012, the things first-time visitors get caught out by, and a clear-eyed read on how the city compares to others you might already know.

What you get on Kakapo

Each city has a guide written by someone who has been there or worked through a long checklist of trusted local sources. We cover crime context, women travelling alone, transport, the standard scams, healthcare access, weather, and the practical stuff (where to actually stay, where to avoid after midnight, which taxi apps lock you out of the worst overcharging).

Every city also has a live safety score from 0 to 100. The number is a composite drawn from primary public sources — US State Department + UK FCDO advisories, UN crime data, World Bank governance indicators, World Health Organisation health data, and measured air-quality readings — combined with our editorial review. It updates as the world does. The full methodology is at /about/methodology and every feed is listed at /data-sources.

Who is behind it

A small group of travellers, writers, and engineers who got tired of the same problem we are solving. Several of us have lived abroad for years. A few of us have been mugged. Most of us have made a stupid travel decision and survived it. We write the guide we wish we had.

The name comes from the kakapo, a flightless parrot from New Zealand. It is curious, slow to startle, and famously unbothered by the things tourists usually worry about. We thought it was a fair mascot for the kind of traveller we are writing for: alert without being paranoid.

Get in touch

Email [email protected] or use the contact form. Reader emails are how a lot of our best updates start. Spotted a guide that is out of date, a neighbourhood we got wrong, or a city you wish we covered? Tell us. We read every message and reply to most.

Where to find us

Our main site is kakapo.travel. You may also see us referenced as Gokakapo or gokakapo.com, which is just a marketing alias that redirects here. Same site, same team, same brand.