[QUOTE=Bruce52; 1516287]Today is my last full day of my first trip ever to Rio. My expectations were high, based on reports here from 2010 or so. Things have changed for the worse, I'm afraid.
I stayed in Copacabana, so most of my mongering was in that area. Monte Carlo is still there, but too expensive for my taste. I pay less than that at home in Florida, for comparable quality. Centaurus is doing well in Ipanema, but it's even more expensive. Not interested.
Copacabana's Terma 22 (Azulzinho 22) is very much alive, but I never found a girl there who interested me. They were all too heavy. Maybe if I hung around longer, I'd see something I like, but I never did. Just dropped in a few times and left almost immediately.
The building at 583 Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana apparently had several massage places a few years ago. Now it appears to have just one: Sala 203. Either prices have gone up a lot, or I got gringo pricing, but they asked for 150 reals for half an hour. I paid that willingly, because I found a girl I really liked there. In fact, I saw her three times on this 8-day trip. Very satisfied. The guy who runs the place is nice enough and speaks a bit of English. The girl spoke almost none. (And I speak almost no Portuguese, but we made it work.)
I had good luck at both 169 and 173 Rua Toneleros. Both places are easy to find and have a nice group of friendly girls. Not great beauties, but very friendly. I found girls I liked at both places.
I hung out at Balcony Bar several nights. Occasionally, women approached me, but they really weren't attractive. One must have been 50 years old (younger than I am, but still). I never even got to the negotiation stage, and the number of women there was tiny every night I was there. Turned out to be a waste of my time.
One day, I went downtown and hunted for the "Big 5" massage places near Carioca Metro Station (see Bubba's guide, part 1, page 14). The first three seem to have disappeared or are totally unmarked. The first one listed is on a floor that seems to be higher than the building is! Maybe someone reported its address wrong, but I walked through many floors looking for the place, with no luck. The second sala I found, but the massage place seems to be gone. The third one also seems to be gone. I didn't want to walk all the way to the other two addresses, so I just gave up at that point.
I walked around outdoors quite a lot, including New Year's Eve, when I was on the beach with 2. 3 million other people, mostly locals. I did my best to strike up conversations with girls, hoping to connect with someone for a freebie, or even just a guide! Never had any luck. One very nice girl helped me order ice cream from a local shop when the staff couldn't bridge the language gap between us. This girl spoke both English and Portuguese and was very friendly, but after we both ordered our ice cream, she just walked home.
So, that's about it. I haven't given up on Brazil, but next time I'll try Sao Paulo. There are plenty of places in Latin America that are much better than Rio for finding girls.
Bruce[/QUOTE]I have to disagree with you. You definetely stayed in the old mongering ground zero but nowadays all the action in my humble opinion takes place in Centro.
There are many termas there that are way cheaper than Copa:MV30, T31, Face, Florida, T505, 119, T81-even 4 x 4 is cheaper if you hit it early and thats not even counting the endless termas in other areas and the privees. I might stay in Copa or Ipanema but I hit Centro. You are definetely correct that you will strike out with non-pros if you don't know portugese.
If you want to get further, learn some more porto and hit Lapa at night and cristovao thur-Sunday-plenty of cariocas.
I think on the contrary actually. Come to think of it, you can go and do a session at MC and have great chemistry and meet up outside for free-the initial outlay might be the only one and then it doesn't look so bad. I for one feel Rio is great but you do have to know where to go and ideally speak. I have now learnt portugese in 7 months, I'm pretty fluent now and it has made a huge difference in terms of being able to show more of my personality and the chicas being able to be themselves more.
Abracos
