Sightseeing in Manaus, Brazil, at the heart of Amazonas state

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After a short stay in São Paulo, we flew to Manaus,  the capital of Amazonas state. I was dreaming about this city since I have written a paper about Brazil in high school. I have been waiting curiously to see the leftovers from the great buildings that were built during the 19th century after the rubber boom – and before the rubber was smuggled out to Southeast Asia…

Manaus, the heart of Amazonas

A little dream came true. We have seen THE AMAZON! Had the first glance of it already from the plane.

The Amazonas is about 7000 km long, and the two source rivers (the Rio Solimoes and the Rio Negro) confluence just below Manaus. The Rio Negro is about 14 km wide next to the city. It is hard to imagine that width for me, who considered the Danube a rather wide river in Budapest…

Arrival at Manaus airport

We landed at the airport, it was hot, around 30°C. It seemed especially hot after the 15°C Finnish summers. We (understand: me, Katalin) need to acclimatize. Karol likes hot weather, but I need a few days before I consider 20°C chilly. Manaus seemed a perfect place for it.

First, we had to find the city buses to the center. The airport is about 15 km away from the center, and no way that we can spend as much as the taxi drivers want. And we are not in a hurry. The young girl from the tourist info was helpful, told us with pretty good English which buses are good for us, how much they cost and where we should wait. We also collected some tourist maps of the city – it will be good for later. The bus ride was long but cheap, and it was easy to get off at the harbor, and from there we found our accommodation. There, as we expected, the staff (owner?) did not speak English at all. It was a good idea to take a pocket dictionary (Finnish-Portuguese!!!) because we did not have an internet connection there.

Read about our budget: How expensive traveling in Brazil is?

Where to Stay in Manaus

Manaus offers a variety of accommodations from backpacker hostels to 4-star hotels. Here are a couple of suggestions for hostels and hotels in Manaus.

• Budget hostel in Manaus. There is even a tiny pool to drip after your sightseeing days. We stayed here too.

If you are looking for something mid-range or more:

• stay in the center in a 4 star casa-hotel
• four-star hotel a bit further away yet still within walking distance.
  
  For “jungle” tour – check out this, we have used them too. If you want to first, read our experiences and adventures in the rainforest.

3 Days in Manaus: Exploring the famous and less famous spots

The colonial remains

We traveled without checked-in luggage, so we couldn’t take sunscreen with us, but urgently needed one. Yes, in Finland we still had to wear long sleeves in June, so dear reader, you can imagine how white we were… Katalin was quite anxious about it, she can turn red in minutes (by the sun and her anger as well.. 😉 ) and our conversations were limited to which shop has sunscreen and how strong protection they give. Luckily, this issue was solved in an hour, so we could continue enjoying Manaus.

The Opera House

The city was very lively with tourists around the famous buildings and museums. We have visited several popular places – those were the ones that have been renovated recently: the Opera House (Teatro Amazonas) which was built from material all over the world (mostly from Europe). Few free shows are going on in the evenings, in case you don’t want to pay the tourist fee to see the inside hall.

The Cutest Palaces

The market (Mercado Municipal), the Rio Negro Palace with a nice garden and park with lovely birds (and free wifi!) behind it, and the Praça Heliodoro Balbi Palace which had few exhibitions inside. Also, we were using the free internet from the building, as that was the only place around the palace where it actually loaded something. Probably they were wondering why we are so interested in the old uniform of the Brazilian police force.

Check prices of city tours that include the Opera House!

The rainy season

We were there in July, and even though the rainy season was over, the water level was still extremely high. In some streets in the center, we were walking literally ‘in’ the river. Probably related to the high water level, or it is just natural, but the city was full (!!!!) with mosquitoes. I gave a second thought if I should have taken malaria pills (we didn’t), but millions of people live here, and the dangerous type of malaria is not too common in this region. I was wondering how many of them are outside of the city, where water flows and does not stand between the buildings.

The Amazon & the Rio Negro

We had many walks around the city, checking the harbor, other markets with trunks of bananas as far as you can see, taking pictures of the once very pretty but now falling apart colonial buildings. We walked on the shore and see how people live on their boats. And how dirty the water around the city is. You could find everything from fruit peels through clothes, shoes to TV… We skipped the famous beach areas (Ponta Negra and Praia da Lua Beach), but those are kept in a nicer shape.

The Meeting of Waters

We had other plans to see the meeting of waters (Encontro das Aguas), where the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimões (which simply you can call Amazon) meet and flow next to each other for 6 km and have a different color. They don’t mix because of the 6°C difference in their temperature. Rio Solimões is sometimes considered Amazon but sometimes called Amazon only after the two rivers’ confluence. We didn’t want to pay for any tour. And we have already taken a few pictures from the plane when we approached the city. Actually, we crossed it later when we went to Tabatinga by boat and it turns out that the best view on the Meeting of Waters is from the air.

Book a tour now!

Altogether we have stayed 3 days in Manaus, we ate the first unknown fish and fruits and started to sample the wide variety of local food in the canteen where you could take anything from the buffet table and they have measured your plate and you paid after its weight. We got bitten by a few mosquitoes as well, but then we were ready to spend a week in the rainforest next to the Rio Negro.

PS. Later we just have seen in the news, that we were only a few days apart from the killings which took place in the city.

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