We ended up in a poor area - not quite a favela - but working class.
The local bottle shop had a television on the counter and they encouraged us to sit down. Later, another bigger screen appeared from nowhere and was set up.
Behind us some locals played pool on a table that was completely worn and frayed from decades of use. The proprietor insisted we try some local delicacies - only later did we realise it was some of the lunch that had been prepared for him and his family. We left after two hours, paying about $8 for two rounds of drinks, with no attempt to charge us tourist prices.
In Recife, after a taxi driver got lost taking me across the large city, the same guy insisted on driving me to the airport for free the next day "so you don't think we are bad people".
A colleague's rental car got a puncture in the middle of nowhere. Then he discovered the spare tyre was deflated. The occupant of a passing car stopped and drove him to the nearest town.
Fortaleza, in the far north, is often rated one of the most dangerous cities in Brazil and Recife has an equally bad reputation.
The sense of safety here has been accentuated by a constant police presence, with numbers increased in all the host cities.
In Fortaleza, there seemed to be groups of police or military police on every city centre corner, and watching from towers in the fanfest areas.
There were even police on horseback patrolling the main beaches, leading travelling Aucklander Matt Shepherd to opine that he "felt safer here than he did on Queen Street on a Saturday night".
Brazilians like to drink and party but there's none of that undertone of aggression. They seem to be happy drunks. Expatriate Kiwi Mark Hindmarsh says he's seen just two fights in more than a decade of running bars in Sao Paulo.
Of course, there are risks and there have been some serious incidents. One photographer was mugged walking from the airport terminal to a taxi and another journalist lost everything from his hotel room (even all his clothes) after going for a walk after checking in.
Last week, some Kiwi fans who stayed up to watch the sun rise near Salvador's lighthouse were accosted by a group of youths and relieved of money, phones and watches.
After withdrawing cash from an ATM machine inside a bank, you feel a bit nervous walking back to your hotel with 1200 Reals (NZ$620), equivalent to two months' wages for some Brazilians.
As one experienced expatriate said, it always pays to have some "mugging money" on you wherever you go, as local hoodlums won't be able to comprehend foreign visitors not having money.
It's hard to escape the poverty here and, despite some gains in the past decade, massive inequalities have been a breeding ground for crime. But the majority of Brazilians seem wonderful, kind people, desperate for travellers to have a great time in their country.
