To be honest, not a great experience.
The appartment is lacking in a few areas but what made the experience less than good was how it is handled by the hosts.
It all started when we sent a request asking about why the price jumped from $56 per night to $2200/month when we book 30 days (that didn't happen with other appartments we were looking at), the host accepted the request before answering our question, explaining that the extra $500 was for new years eve nights, and offered a "5% discount" .. Okay, but we're renting a full month, a real gesture would have been appreciated.
Once we arrived, it turns out we arrived in Rio (from Europe) hours before the planned time, so we contacted the hosts (there were 3 of them), to let them know we arrived and ask to let us know if by any chance we could check-in earlier than noon, radio silence, not a single answer to 3 messages sent.. so we waited outside for hours and just checked in at 12:00 with the cleaning lady, the hosts were not there.
There were no instructions for anything, other than the wifi password, no instruction for the tv, ac, washing machine, trash management, etc .. so we sent a message asking for explanations, no response .... we had to send another message again 3 days later, and got 1 liners type of answers .. and 2 days later they sent us a message to ask at what time we will check-out 25 days later ... :facepalm:
And then started the real problems, the washing machine, for which the explanation they gave us was "open, push the button, close", happens to clear the water into a big sink (very old & clunky system), that was clogged, thankfully we were watching the machine when we started seeing the water overflow, we had to spend the full 30min filling up a trash bin with water and emptying it into the toilet, back and forth, otherwise the appartment would have been flooded.
Also, the bathroom sink was leaking a little bit so we asked how to fix it or at least stop the water in the appartment when we're out as a precaution, so they came with a plumber while we were there, and simply stopped the water in parts of the appartments, so no more washing machine and no hot water for the next 15 days :(
We initially planned to travel out of Rio for 4 days to the amazon and back, but given the situation, we decided to extend the trip for the rest of our time in Brazil, so we spent 15 days not in the appartment, only came back to Rio and the appartment to checkout (which they asked us 2 more times about in those 15days) and take our flight back to europe.
To be fair, the view is indeed gorgeous, but the Botafogo beach is not swimmable, so count a solid 45min walk to reach Copacabana, and the appartment is very loud as it is on a 4 lanes road that has traffic almost at all times.
Needless to say, we're not gonna collect the "generous" 5% discount, and as much as I hate leaving bad reviews, this time I felt that it would be a disservice both to the hosts themselves and to the future guests if nothing changed.