Thursday 28 May

By the time we are awake it's 9:15. About 12 hours in bed. So good. We get up and prepare to leave. We enter the airport and discover our flight has been cancel. It's a bit of a rigmarole to get it sorted, but we get there and then drop our baggage off.
It's a bit of a wait, but a short flight to Rio. There is a sign in the baggage claim area not to accept rides from taxi drivers that approach you. We decide to buy return taxi ride. We hand over the ticket and off we go. The hostel is right at the end of a road up a hill (usually where the bad real estate is). The taxi driver seems to be in a bit of a snot about something. Guess there are some advantages to not speaking the language. We offer to walk the rest of the way, but he declines and takes us. It's a pile of construction rubbish at the end and no hostel in site! It looks like a slummy area. Thankfully there are little tiki's painted on the wall by the stairs and along the way to direct us, plus helpful locals. Eventually we come to a red door and ring the buzzer. A guy lets us in and a lady lets us directly into our room. We set our stuff down and check out the building. We find the manager at the top and pay for the room. Then we check out the view. It's great. Then we head to the bottom level. There are 5 levels plus the roof. We chat to the owner on the basement/games room. He is from NZ and got stuck here 10 years ago, thus the tiki's. He brought the then 2 storied building and had it professionally designed and strengthened to its current state. He had to buy on the hill as the real estate prices had increased 3x in the last 10 years. He gives us pointers and then we relax for the rest of afternoon evening. The dark clouds start emptying. Forecast not looking good.