Staying at Gabriel´s apartment was nice. It looks just like on the pictures and my friend Nicole and I felt safe. Gabriel as well as his family are very friendly and he responded quickly to emails. We didn´t feel like the bed was too hard, by the way, it felt pretty comfortable to us. Gabriel offers tours you can book with his friend Wilson, we didn´t feel interested since at the time Samba wasn´t available, but you might be.
Make sure if you´re two people and you think you might need a second key you remind him to bring the second one. ;-)
Gabriel´s father in law was the one we handed the keys over to and I can say he was very nice and patient with us when we were late with packing. :-)
The taxi ride to this apartment from the international airport costs 40-50 R$, that´s the regular meter price. Make sure you don´t pay more. Gabriel didn´t know this also, that´s why I´m posting it here.

upshot: clean, friendly, safe, 2 min. walking distance to the beach - 5 points! :-)

PS: Other than advertised there is no washer in the apartment or building, you will need to walk about 6 blocks to the next "lavanderia", that´s what we did.