World Cup Diary Day 8: Hotels too costly? Try an Amazonian hammock

Gary Meenaghan files from Brazil, where he found you have to get creative with accommodations in the Amazon.

Gary Meenaghan recommends a hammock along the Amazon if hotels prove troublesome in Manaus. Felipe Dana / AP / May 22, 2014

BRASILIA // One positive that can be taken from the inevitable surge in hotel prices across Brazil this month is that it forces you to be creative with your accommodation options. A double room in Manaus in April cost R$80 (Dh130), yet a bed in a 12-person dorm on the night of United States versus Portugal will set you back R$330.

If you can find one.

The result is you either pay the going rate or you look elsewhere. Hotels are no longer the only option for the World Cup traveller: websites such as AirBnB and Wimdu, as well as that ever-reliable source known as Friends-of-Family-Who-You-Don’t-Know-But-Might-Like-To-Start-Getting-To-Know, are all feasible options.

In Fortaleza, for example, it is possible to stay in the spare room of a lovely family with six dogs and a desire to treat you like a long-lost cousin, even though your only common bond is your use of AirBnB.

Hotels might provide breakfast, but rarely do they offer round-the-clock coffee, lunch and a delicious dinner of fish, rice and pirao (a fish sauce mixed with flour). All for a 10th of the price of a hotel along the road.

Naturally, even the people with spare rooms are aware demand is higher than the supply. The closer the World Cup appeared, the higher the prices rose. Now, even on AirBnB, it is impossible to find a single bed in Manaus for less than R$250 per night.

Such a figure may not appear a bank-breaker, but multiply it by 31 nights and suddenly the World Cup no longer appears as affordable as it once did.

Unless, that is, you are willing to sleep in a hammock on a stationary boat – which you should be, given the fact it is docked on the Amazon.

For R$120, you can drift off under the night sky with the sound of birds in your ears – and that ever-loveable chant of “USA, USA!”