Welcome to the World Cup: Brazil's High Prices Shock Tourists

A woman buys an hamburger in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, June 3, 2014. It’s not just the hotels and flights that will break wallets. It’s the $10 caipirinhas, the $17 cheeseburgers or that $35 pepperoni pizza. Unlike nearby Latin American nations where a tourist’s U.S. dollar or European Union euro seemingly stretches forever, Brazil is astoundingly expensive. HASSAN AMMAR — AP Photo
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We are officially at the 2014 World Cup week, the week tourists flying to Brazil had been waiting for. The land of soccer, sun, beaches, and … impossible prices.

According to Fox News Latino, Brazil is turning out to be astoundingly expensive.

Check out these prices:

—Single room at four-star hotel in Copacabana: $400 a night.

—Big Mac: $6.28.

—iPhone 5s: $1,250 on Apple’s Brazilian website.

—Official Brazil national team soccer shirt: $103-$157.

—Pair of Nike’s Flyknit Lunar 2 running shoes: $313.

—Levis 501: $80.

—”Rodizio,” all-you-can-eat barbecue meal: $60, without drinks.

—Caipirinha cocktail, made with Brazil’s cachaca sugar cane liquor: $10.

—Entrance to visit Christ the Redeemer statue: $22.

—Entrance to top of Sugar Loaf mountain: $22.

If hotel and flight expenses aren’t enough to break your bank, try going for a $10 caipirinha cocktail, a $17 cheeseburger or the $35 pepperoni pizza. 

These are prices the city-dwelling Brazilians saw even before the World Cup set off a new standard of sticker shock.

The cause of the “Brazil Cost”? A mixture of high taxes and steep import tariffs, combined with bad infrastructure, a dose of inefficiency and a thick shot of bureaucracy. 

Demand leading up to a big event like the World Cup naturally raises prices. But, since costs already were high to begin with, tourists should prepare to dig deep into their wallets and not be too miffed to receive goods or services of inferior quality, said Rafael Alcadipani, a business administration professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil’s top think tank.