Nice town, shame about the hostel
Trip Start
Oct 16, 2008
1
21
35
Trip End
Apr 16, 2009
Saquarema,
State of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Bus trip to Saquarema (100km east of Rio along the coast) was uneventful, except for almost missing our stop - it was unannounced and we assumed we would be going to the end of the line. We walked much longer than the advertised 10 minutes to the hostel and found it a quiet little place with only one other guest, the owner living in the back, and two resident dogs (who apparently came with the house when he bought it). First impressions were okay, the pool looked nice and clean, fruit trees in the garden, and Jose seemed like a nice enough bloke. Our room was miniscule however, and I discovered that despite having negotiated a price for the whole room when we would only be occupying three of the four beds, the fourth bed was in fact unusable as it was a top bunk with slats on only half of the frame and nothing to hold up the other half of the mattress. Hm.
We went out that night to the only place close by that was open, a charming little pizzeria in the front of a guesthouse, run by a guy from Buenos Aires (so we got to use our Spanish instead of attempting Portuguese). It was really, really, really good pizza, and we figured in our two weeks in Saquarema we might be back there once or twice.
The next day when we went to use the bathroom, we discovered more issues and started to regret having booked in for 12 nights. Without going in to too much detail, it was disgusting. You know how a shower curtain starts to grow mould after a while if it doesn't get dried properly? The entire bottom half of it was black. And you know how in some places you can't flush the toilet paper down the toilet but have to put it in the garbage? Well, there was only one other guest and I swear that thing had not been emptied for several weeks. And the kitchen. Oh dear. And the yard was full of dog shit. Basically, Jose didn't have a cleaner and he never cleaned the place himself. We really felt sorry for poor Anna (the other guest) who had been stuck in the place for five weeks already when we arrived - she had broken her arm and had surgery and was having physio treatment daily and waiting for the doctor to give her a report so she could get her insurance and finally leave town. After we started talking with her about it, she told us she had just been trying to close her eyes and ignore it, and as she was travelling alone and it was the only hostel in town, it wasn't economical for her to find somewhere else.
Not us. Patrick and I went to a nearby town with Anna to check out the supermarkets there while Blair wandered around Saquarema looking for an alternative place to stay. There were lots of places to rent but they all just had a phone number, and we didn't have confidence in our ability to negotiate over the phone in Spanish, let alone in Portuguese. He resigned himself to at least spending a few more nights in hell, and set himself to cleaning the place up a bit. Jose was in Rio for the day, so he had free reign to pull the place apart and use the washing machine. Everything kind of smelled like dog and the smelliest thing in the whole place was the mattress protector on my bed, so he washed them all and the sheets and aired out the mattresses. Then he scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom. He couldn't bear to touch the bathroom though, it was soooo bad. When Patrick and I returned, we all went for a swim in the pool (the only clean thing in the whole place) and set off for lunch at a little hole in the wall called "The Twins". Great food, lots of beans, rice, fries and salad and your choice of meat for next to nothing, all served by a crazy Brazilian woman.
Wandering back, we stopped at a place on the water to check out prices and found a triple room with private (clean!) bathroom was two-thirds of what we were paying at the hostel, but they didn't have availability through New Year's. We walked further along and went to the pizzeria from the night before, just to check out the guesthouse in the back, on the off-chance it was affordable too. It was just as cheap as the other place, and even with a significant price hike for the week over New Year's, it still worked out to the same price as the hovel, I mean hostel. And they were such nice people! And we could speak Spanish with them!!!
When Jose got back from Rio that night, we told him the news that we would be leaving the next day, and he stormed out of the room without hearing our reasons. We really wanted to tell him why but he just didn't want to hear it, he was just mad that he lost a 12-night booking. We vowed to out him as a pig on hostelworld.com (where he has rave reviews) but have still not bothered to do it.
While we still had use of a kitchen, which I knew was clean thanks to Blair, we cooked some potatoes and eggs so that Christmas would not go by without my potato salad. One more night in (a little bit less) stinky hell.
