When you're ready to leave you can't go to the front door. That would make
sense. They have several large men standing there who prevent you from leaving. Instead you have to go find the cashier (caixa), which is sometimes labeled with a sign, but sometimes not. Then you pay your tab, which often times requires the cashier to ask questions of the waiter & bartender, discussion ensuing. Wasn't everything listed on the card already? I'm not sure of the purpose of the discussions. As part of your bill you also pay the cover charge for the bar. Did you remember to ask about the cover charge when you went in? They usually remember to tell you when you enter. After you pay the cashier gives you a slip of paper, or maybe a different card, or maybe the same card marked for exit. That is your exit pass. Don't lose that piece of paper or card, nor shove it in your pocket. You'll need that to exit, and you'll have a tough time if you lose it.Rio is a late night city. Things start at midnight or 1am and go to 4am or 5am. But why is my body still waking up at 9am?
We decide to take a slow day on Wednesday. Sleep late, a long breakfast, sitting by the pool, reading, using the sauna. We also work out in the exercise room and swim, and I do my own yoga in the sauna. I'm starting to feel healthier again for the first time since we arrived in Rio.
On wednesday evening we go back to the hostel for fun, then went to a disco with brazilians and have fun dancing and playing pool. Then Bobby and I decide to go to a brazilian strip club that a guy at the hotel told us about. It's filled with hookers and an occasional stripper, but also samba-style dance
acts.(This picture is from a different club with samba-style dance acts, one without hookers. But you get the picture.)
The hookers in the strip club start calling me "Cowboy". I've been wearing a western hat sometimes in Rio. Technically, it's not a cowboy hat; It's a western hat, made in Australia from kangaroo leather. (Explaning the origin of my hat is probably as meaningless to you as it was to the people here.) Twice earlier this week random
people would start calling me Cowboy. For the hookers in this club, it is in full swing. They only know about 10 words in English, but they know how to say "Cowboy". One of the hookers motions to borrow the hat. I'm wary, but I allow it. She starts dancing with it, and then the stripper on the small stage sees her with the hat, yells over to her, and motions for her to bring it to the stage. Soon the stripper on stage is wearing my hat and incorporating it into her act, pulling imaginary six-shooter guns from near her hips.The place is so overrun with hookers that I can't take any more after 10 minutes, so I retrieve my hat and decide to leave. That's when they say I owe them 60 Real as a cover charge. Now, I know I should have asked about this before we went in, but I'm still annoyed that they purposefully didn't tell us about it. I tell them I won't pay. The manager comes over and starts yelling at me in Portuguese. He knows I don't speak Portuguese, he's just doing it to intimidate me.
I tell the guy I'm leaving and start walking towards the door. A big guy jumps in front of me and says "Hey man, you tough guy, you superman, you're just going to walk out of here like superman?" From the way he was talking, I think that was the only english he knew. Bobby was still chatting up the hookers, and I decide to ask his advice. He says "What, are you kidding? Just pay the 60 and walk out."
Angry at the partial deception and hostage situation, after paying I decide to walk instead of getting a cab. A block away from the club, I walk past two guys sitting on the street corner who see me and start yelling "Cowboy, come here man!" They start following me and yelling "Cowboy" after me. Did the hookers radio ahead to these guys? Somehow it's far more threatening coming from two guys who have nothing better to do than sit on a street corner at 2:30 in the morning.
Bobby shows up at the hotel about 20 minutes later.
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