I got up today with two things in mind: visit the neighbourhood and find another hostel. Since the hostels that Daniela suggested to me were a little far, I only decided to visit the neighbourhood for now.

When I got back to the hostel, the owner was there and asked my why I was leaving and I told him because I was being charged for things that most hostels don't charge. He responded by the fact that this was the cheapest hostel in Rio de Janeiro, however, that wasn't a good enough excuse for me. I picked up my stuff and asked for a refund for my three other nights that I paid for, however, I jst got back part of the money. When I asked for the rest of my money, the owner took back the money he gave me and told me that I was not getting anything back if I was going to be difficult and ask for more money.

The situation became really tense, and I could not understand why he was being a p**** I asked for the money he gave me and just left. I was not going to argue for a few US dollars. However, I still found that he was being extremely unfair. It was really hard to swallow my pride and leave the hostel, but I did so anyway...

The walk to the metro was extremely difficult because I was really mad. I thought about the fact that if I was travelling with someone, i would have been able to fight properly for my money back. What made things worse is while I was thinking about all of this I stepped into a pile of dog s*** (a classic when you are extremely mad...good ol' murphy's law...).

I decided to stay at the first hostel that I visited. It looked like a really nice hostel, and once they told me that internet was free, I was sold! Once I got settled, I went off to visit the Pao de Azucar. A mountain that was accessible through a cable car and that had a beautiful lookout of all of Rio de Janeiro.

It was quite far from the hostel (in Urca), but I decided to walk it since it was such a beautiful day. This was the first time in my whole trip where I felt that I was actually on vacation (with hot weather and beaches!).

The Pao de Azucar was a little steep in price, but once I got to the top, it was definitely worth it! I spent a good 2 hours up there just admiring the wonderful views. Once I got back down, I walked back to the hostel (about a one hour walk), and went for supper.

Daniela's friend, Suzie, was meeting me at my hostel at 9pm. Suzie is another one in the field of marine biology, but she is doing her post-doctorate at the same place where Daniela works. We went for a beer and waited for Daniela. She also speaks Spanish, like Daniela, because she spent 8 months in Spain. This was the only method that I was able to talk to the girls (even though Daniela spoke English, but was too shy to talk...).

Once Daniela came, we went out to this really fancy place. It looked like an old 50s speakeasy, but that had Parisian decorations around as well. It had three floors with two dancefloors. The first played live samba music, and the second played brazilian songs for a younger generation with a DJ. Daniela tried to show me how to dance Samba, which I think I did a pretty good job at, bt wasn't sure by the laughs I got from the two girls...We partied until around 4am. Suzi had to get up at 7am the next morning to teach...poor her!

I was determined to party every night, because it was my last week of my trip, and because I was in Rio, the party city, home of Carnaval!