Beach Hostel Cabo Frio

A top place!

It was okay.

Really top!

I really can’t recommend this place. We booked the private couple’s suite, room 11, for two nights. Vado welcomed us warmly and gave us useful tips about the area. There aren’t regular employees on site; volunteers, mostly Argentinians, handle cleaning and tidying. They were polite and attentive, though they didn’t understand much of what we said. The location is excellent, with small grocery shops, a pharmacy, and a drinks shop nearby. Praia do Forte, Forte São Mateus, the bars around Praça da Passagem, and the crossing point for Ilha do Japonês are all walkable in under ten minutes. Rua Porto Alegre’s bars are about a ten-minute drive away. The shower and air conditioning worked very well. The outdoor area is spacious and breezy, just like the photos, and it’s easy to park in the square across from the hostel. The room was a different story. We arrived before check-in and asked to see it before paying the balance. They said it still needed cleaning and tidying, which we understood. But the furniture was dirty when I went in, and it didn’t look like leftover mess from previous guests. There were dead mosquitoes and old moths stuck to the wall. The bathroom was so filthy I was shocked. We considered finding somewhere else while we waited, but holiday prices were high and Cabo Folia was on. We went to the beach and came back that night, giving them plenty of time to prepare the room. It still hadn’t been cleaned. There were no towels or sheets, the shower tiles had slime, the floor was sandy, and the mini-fridge was dirty. They had only emptied the bin. Disgusting. We politely asked for towels and sheets and pointed out that the bathroom hadn’t been washed. The cleaner said they would do it, explaining that the room had only been tidied quickly to let us in. In the end, it was never cleaned. We got just two hand towels because, we were told, towels were always being washed. We had to take sheets from the washing line for the second night, and they were all dingy. Otherwise, we’d have had nothing to cover ourselves with. I knew this was a basic place without the facilities of an inn or hotel, but cleanliness and order are the bare minimum and shouldn’t need to be requested. It could have been a great place with proper management.