Day 64: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Morning bus back to Rio left us outside in the sweltering 96 degree heat melting beneath our backpacks as we tried to find a cheap hostel. Despite the fact that we left Rio for almost a week to escape Carnival prices, we were hard pressed to find a hostel that had gone back to its usual prices. Of course, since we´re stubborn and tend to make things harder than they need to be, we refused to get a taxi and walked about for 3 hours to find a good hostel before taking the metro from Copacabana neighborhood into Botafogo, a quiet upper-middle class neighborhood near a small beach and huge shopping mall.

We checked into the Botafogo hostel and they take bunkbeds very seriously, perhaps too seriously. In all the hostels we´ve been to so far in our lives, we have never seen one triple stacked. No joke.

Saben`s Pethouse Suite

And the best part–the only 2 beds available in the whole place were 2 very top bunks (3rd story). As much of a pain in the ass is was to climb 12 feet up to our penthouses, it turned out to be awesome because we were about 2 feet from the ceiling fan! Despite this, it was still ridiculously hot and sticky, but such is Rio in the summertime.

Pretty late in the afternoon by this time, we didn´t end up doing much today. We hunted down some lunch which took far, far too long. Just so you know, if you stay at the Botafogo hostel, be prepared to either cook at the hostel or walk a hundred miles til you find some decent food. And our standards weren´t even high–we just wanted something besides a tiny fried pastel or another freakin´package of cookies! We finally found a little corner place with burgers and not much else. Brazilian food is mainly burgers and pizza although technically it´s rice and beans but everyone seems to only eats fastfood and ice cream. Hey, this is every 10-year-old´s dream!