A travel advisory should start the safety conversation, not end it.
University faculty, deans, study abroad advisors, and parents are right to read their countries’ travel advisory warnings before sending their students to Latin America. The language is official and intentionally serious—often mentioning crime, unrest, natural disasters, health concerns, or places where their governments have limited ability to provide aid.
While caution is an important part of safe travel, it doesn’t mean students from the U.S., Canada, the UK, and other countries should accept travel advisories uncritically. Nor does it mean they should stop at the broad country level.
A travel advisory is not a verdict on every region and city inside a country. It is a risk assessment document, and it should be read through this lens. Students, parents, and faculty have to consider not only the level, but also risk indicators, geography, and their actual itinerary.
This is the difference between being warned and being informed.
Read the Level, But Read the Reasons Too
Travel Advisories commonly have 4 levels, ranging from countries where “normal” safety precautions should be taken to countries where travel is advised against.
Below is a breakdown of what these levels look like. While the naming conventions might differ across the U.S., Canada, and the UK, the sentiment remains the same.
Level 1: Take the usual safety precautions you would when traveling internationally.
- U.S.: Exercise Normal Precautions
- Canada: Take normal security precautions
- UK: No advisory against travel (standard safety guidance)
Level 2: Be more aware of your surroundings because there are increased safety or security risks.
- U.S.: Exercise Increased Caution
- Canada: Exercise a high degree of caution
- UK: No advisory against travel, but regional warnings or heightened safety risks are flagged
Level 3: Think carefully about traveling because serious safety or security risks exist.
- U.S.: Reconsider Travel
- Canada: Avoid non-essential travel
- UK: Advises against all but essential travel
Level 4: Avoid traveling because there are potentially life-threatening risks and the traveler’s government may have limited ability to help in an emergency.
- U.S.: Do Not Travel
- Canada: Avoid all travel
- UK: Advises against all travel
While these warnings are meant to help citizens make informed travel decisions about Latin America, the level alone never tells the whole story. A Level 2 advisory, for example, does not mean that an entire country is unsafe. It means travelers should be alert to specific risks, usually attached to certain regions, cities, neighborhoods, or other areas within that country.
Take Maximo Nivel’s Costa Rica, San Jose campus, for example. It is located in San Pedro, the capital’s university district and one of the safer areas, and on-site staff have firsthand knowledge of the surrounding neighborhoods. While a Level 2 advisory may caution travelers about petty theft in crowded transit hubs or specific commercial districts in downtown San Jose, that does not mean the same risks apply everywhere. If travelers do not dig deeper when doing their research, they run the risk of mistakenly painting the entire country with the same brush, assuming the worst of every area without having the context to back it up.
Even a Level 3 advisory does not mean every destination inside a country carries the same risk. It simply indicates that travelers need to look closely at where they are going and how they will be supported.
Rather than reducing an entire region to a numerical scale, travelers should ask themselves: What is the advisory really warning about, and where does that warning apply?
The Level 2 Club Is Bigger Than You Think
One of the quickest ways to read travel advisories more honestly is to compare the wide range of countries listed at each level.
Costa Rica and Peru are currently listed as Level 2 in the USA and Canada. At the same time, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom are also Level 2 destinations. European countries, however, usually aren’t written off with a sense of fear.
American and Canadian travelers, for example, often enjoy family vacations in parts of Europe that have been designated as Level 2 by their countries, yet don’t express the same concerns they would when traveling to parts of Latin America with the same Level warning. Why is that?
Would it not be fair to say that travel advisories for Latin America deserve the same careful reading and scrutiny travelers would bestow upon advisories aimed at Europe? In other words, a Level 2 advisory should not become a panic button just because a destination is in Latin America.
An advisory simply cautions travelers to remain aware of their surroundings—a basic rule of thumb whether you are walking through Cusco, Paris, or London. Having full-time staff living and working in Latin America every single day allows Maximo Nivel participants to separate broad policy headlines from the safe, practical reality of daily life on campus.
In Cusco, Peru, where Maximo Nivel has operated since 2003, when on-site staff lead participants on a walking tour through campus and the surrounding areas, any concerns about being in a Level 2 country quickly disappear. That’s because 50% of the Maximo Nivel team are expats who have lived in Peru for years and can paint a clearer picture of life in the country. They provide context where an advisory cannot, and truthfully answer any questions students have in real time.
Staff members who commute to work each day give students firsthand accounts of how to navigate the city, which areas are appropriate for different activities, and which areas to avoid. They guide students on getting around, exploring independently, and making informed decisions during their time in Cusco. This doesn’t mean that every part of the city is completely safe or that risks don’t exist. Rather, it highlights the importance of understanding safety in context—recognizing that conditions can vary between neighborhoods, activities, and times of day.
It’s also worth noting that 60% of the Maximo Nivel team in Latin America is female, giving female solo travelers people they can connect with, ask questions, and turn to for practical advice, whether they’re in Peru, Costa Rica, or Guatemala.
Level 3 Still Has Geographical Distinctions
Of course Level 3 deserves attention, but it should be read as a map, not a stamp!
Guatemala is currently classified as Level 3, but many popular destinations remain open to government employees and their families, including Antigua, Tikal, Lake Atitlán, and Pacific coast areas in Santa Rosa and Escuintla.
Travel advisories name specific high-risk areas, including the San Marcos and Huehuetenango departments and land border crossings into Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Belize. While government employees and their families are not permitted to travel to those areas, the distinction shows why a country-level advisory needs to be read alongside the specific location being visited—a single country’s borders can hold many very different stories.
Even though an honest advisory, or even a local, wouldn’t claim that “nothing” ever happens in Guatemala, no realistic safety conversation should pretend that every part of Guatemala is the same either. Maximo Nivel has operated its campus in Antigua since 2009, so the local team understands these nuances better than most.
Antigua is a quaint, walkable town encircled by breathtaking volcanoes. It has its own character—dappled with colorful markets, colonial ruins, and rooftop cafés. It is unrealistic and alarmist to treat Antigua as if it carries the same risk profile as restricted areas in northern Guatemala near the Mexican border.
Many times, these distinctions only become clear once you arrive in a city or have in-depth discussions with people on the ground. This is why Maximo Nivel participants receive practical, location-specific guidance before arrival, during in-country orientation, and throughout their stay, including information about navigating the town.
They are not simply dropped into Antigua, Guatemala, and expected to interpret a broad travel advisory on their own. It’s much easier when students have locals to help them understand what those advisories mean in the context of everyday life in a city or town.
Peru Is Proof That the Map Matters
Peru makes this distinction even clearer.
The country is listed as a Level 2 overall, and popular tourist destinations such as Cusco city, the Sacred Valley, the Inca Trail, and Machu Picchu are considered safe to visit and explicitly identified as falling entirely outside of specific “Level 4” areas like the Colombia–Peru border of Loreto and the VRAEM (a remote region of mountain river valleys weaving through southern-central Peru). This nuance should change how the warning is read.
It is not enough to read blanket statements about travel warnings “in Peru.” A Maximo Nivel student walking to class in the historical center of Cusco, for example, is over 600 miles from the Colombia–Peru border area in Loreto. While the VRAEM is more complex as it is a broad region that extends into parts of the Cusco department, it is still an 8-hour drive away from Cusco city and the popular tourist sites surrounding it. Proving that many times country-level travel advisories can be hard to interpret or simply don’t provide enough location-specific context.
This type of distinction is often instinctively understood by citizens when related to their home countries. No American judges the entire United States by comparing it to Memphis, Tennessee, which FBI-based 2024 data ranked as having the highest violent crime rate among U.S. cities with a population over 100,000. That would be careless risk assessment.
The same applies to cities such as Manchester or Winnipeg, where safety can vary significantly between neighborhoods, circumstances, and times of day. A visitor’s experience in a specific area cannot automatically be used to describe an entire country.
Time-sensitive events offer another useful comparison. Miami during spring break may experience periods of increased crowds, traffic, and public safety concerns that are not representative of the city throughout the year. Similarly, a demonstration during an election period in a Latin American country may affect a particular street, neighborhood, or region without reflecting everyday conditions across the entire country. These situations still deserve attention, and travelers should (and would be notified to) take appropriate precautions, but they need to be understood in context.
In the same way that Americans, Canadians, and Brits understand the difference between individual cities and regions within their own countries, they should recognize that Cusco city should not be evaluated as if it were the Colombia–Peru border. These are geographically distinct parts of Peru, with different local conditions. Just as Antigua should not be evaluated as if it were Zone 18, one of the dangerous neighborhoods in Guatemala City. These places are not interchangeable simply because they share a national border.
On-the-Ground Facilities & Local Support Make a Difference
On the ground, safety planning starts with addresses and daily routines, not country-wide concerns. Maximo Nivel students are not dropped into a vague idea of “Latin America.” They arrive at specific institutes in specific countries—Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Peru—with guidance and support from local staff.
In Costa Rica, Maximo Nivel has campuses in San Pedro, the lively university district of San Jose, and in Manuel Antonio-Quepos, where the campus is near the Malecón, artisan market, and the new bustling marina.
In Guatemala, the institute is in Antigua, about a block and a half from the colonial Central Plaza and the Instagram-popular Arco de Santa Catalina.
In Peru, it’s in the historical center of Cusco, three blocks from the Plaza de Armas and directly across from Q’oricancha, the Inca Temple of the Sun.
These details are not decorative; they define the student’s real environment.
The reality is, Maximo Nivel students are waking up in safe, arranged housing, traveling to designated locations through arranged private transport or safe public transport, interning and volunteering at placements with trusted organizations, spending time at Maximo Nivel’s modern and comfortable campuses, and learning to navigate local neighbourhoods from staff who understand the area better than any advisory.
Students also have a dedicated field manager, guidance from an academic advisor, and a 24/7 emergency contact.
This is in sharp contrast to an independent traveler arriving in a Level 3 zone with no orientation, housing, or local support network. The risk category may be the same on paper, but the Maximo Nivel student’s actual exposure is quite different.
These are the kinds of details parents and students should consider when assessing a travel advisory about Latin America. An advisory tells travelers what risks exist, but only a specific travel itinerary, like the ones provided to all Maximo Nivel participants, can tell them how exposed they are likely to be to those risks. At the end of the day, a lot of risk assessment also comes down to common sense.
Read Travel Advisories Without Importing Bias
Travel advisories are useful when they raise awareness, sharpen students’ judgment, and push families and university faculty to ask deeper questions about local safety protocols, relying on genuine in-country expertise, rather than online community speculation and unverified commentary.
They are not useful, however, if they simply reduce Latin America to a “danger zone” while Europe, the United States, or Canada are given the benefit of nuance. This double standard is not careful risk assessment.
Risk is real, but so is bias.
This is not to say that travelers should ignore government warnings. However, they should compare other countries listed in the same advisory categories and research their destination specifically, the same way they would when traveling to Italy, Spain or France, so they can look at “risk” more objectively.
No study abroad program can promise nothing will ever happen; no U.S. or European university can promise that either. What actually matters is whether students, interns, volunteers, gap year participants, and adventurers are prepared, oriented, and supported.
Travel advisories are a tool—just one part of the research that fuels responsible travel. So don’t stop reading the warning label, but also don’t forget to look at the whole picture.
Risks will exist no matter where students travel to, so don’t let fear decide. Replace panic with a plan by learning about what local reality actually awaits.