Rio was … a letdown

As much as I wanted to love Rio, I gotta say I’ve had a disappointing experience. Travelling with the wife to celebrate our anniversary, I was expecting a beautiful beach quarter, surrounded by the typical chaotic South American city. The chaos actually is everywhere and can be feel everywhere.

The beach itself was dirty, both tourists and locals who sell everything from Bluetooth speakers, to jewelry, to drinks and food couldn’t care less where the leftovers and containers end up, they litter everywhere.

The smell is some quarters is terrible, there’s garbage everywhere and poo on the sidewalk and let me tell you, it is not dog’s poo.

At some point we were basically chased after by a couple of scary looking young men and had to rush to a military policeman who happened to be parked on Atlantic Ave. It was morning and we were in the supposedly safe part of the city.

We were scammed at the beach in one of the fine establishments where we were charged 30 rials extra for our food (reading other reviews we were lucky not to be overcharged more).

People were not exactly warm as I was expecting. In fact they only warmed up when they were trying to get me to part from my money.

There’s a lot of things that are stunning about Rio and all of it has been described in detail in this Reddit (and was one of the reasons I decided to come) but be aware of the cons in this case outnumbered the pros.