Manaus

Brazil (Amazon)

Manaus

MANAUS is the capital of Amazonas, a tropical forest state covering around one and a half million square kilometres. It is also the commercial and physical hub of the entire Amazon region. Most visitors are surprised to learn that Manaus isn’t actually on the Amazon at all. Rather it lies on the Rio Negro, six kilometres from the point where that river meets the Solimões to form (as far as Brazilians are concerned) the Rio Amazonas. Just a few hundred metres away from the tranquil life on the rivers, the centre of Manaus perpetually buzzes with energy: always noisy, crowded and confused. Escaping from the frenzy is not easy, but there is the occasional quiet corner, and the sights of the port, markets, Opera House and some of the museums make up for the hectic pace in the downtown area. In the port and market areas, where the infamous Porto do Manaus smell is inescapable, pigs and chickens line the streets and there’s an atmosphere which seems unchanged in centuries.

For the Amazon hinterland, Manaus has long symbolized “civilization”. Traditionally, this meant simply that it was the trading centre, where the hardships of life in the forest could be escaped temporarily and where manufactured commodities to make that life easier could be purchased – metal pots, steel knives, machetes and the like. Virgin jungle seems further from the city these days – just how far really depends on what you want “virgin forest” to mean – but there are still waterways and channels within a short river journey of Manaus where you can find dolphins, alligators, kingfishers and the impression, at least, that man has barely penetrated. Indeed, most visitors to Manaus rightly regard a river trip as an essential part of their stay; there is a variety of jungle tour and lodge options. Even if you can’t afford the time to disappear up the Amazon for days at a stretch, however, there are a number of sites around Manaus that make worthwhile day excursions, most notably the meeting of the waters of the yellow Rio Solimões and the black Rio Negro, and the lily-strewn Parque Ecólogico Janauary.

History

The name Manaus came originally from the Manau tribe which was encountered in this region by São Luís do Maranhão, exploring the area in 1616. He called the spot São Luís del Rio. But it was Francisco do Motta Falco who really founded Manaus by building up the settlement and encouraging others to remain there with him.

The city you see today is primarily a product of the rubber boom and in particular the child of visionary state governor Eduardo Ribeiro, who from 1892 transformed Manaus into a major city. Under Ribeiro the Opera House was completed, and whole streets were wiped out in the process of laying down broad Parisian-style avenues, interspersed with Italian piazzas centred on splendid fountains. In 1899 Manaus was the first Brazilian city to have trolley buses and only the second to have electric lights in the streets.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century Manaus was an opulent metropolis run by elegant people, who dressed and housed themselves as fashionably as their counterparts in any large European city. The rich constructed palaces and grandiose mansions; time was passed at elaborate entertainments, dances and concerts. But this heyday lasted barely thirty years, and by 1914 the rubber market was collapsing fast; Ribeiro himself had committed suicide in 1900. There was a second brief boost for Brazilian rubber during World War II, but today’s prosperity is largely due to the creation of a Free Trade Zone, the Zona Franca, in 1966. Over the following ten years the population doubled, from 250,000 to half a million, and many new industries moved in, especially electronics companies. An impressive new international airport was opened in 1976 and the floating port, supported on huge metal cylinders to cope with variations of as much as 14m in the level of the river, was modernized to cope with the new business.

Today, with over three million inhabitants, Manaus is an aggressive commercial and industrial centre for an enormous region – the Hong Kong of the Amazon. Over half of Brazil’s televisions are made here and electronic goods are around a third cheaper here than in the south. All of this helps encourage domestic tourism – Manaus airport is crowded with Brazilians going home with their arms laden with TVs, hi-fis, computers and fax machines.

The City

It’s not hard to get used to the layout of the city, and most things of interest huddle close to the water. From the floating port where the big ships dock, riverboat wharves extend round past the market, from one end of Rua dos Andradas to the other. The busiest commercial streets are immediately behind, extending up to the Avenida Sete de Setembro, with the cathedral marking one end of the downtown district, the Praça da Polícia the other. Beyond Avenida Sete de Setembro, towards the Opera House, it’s a bit calmer, with more offices and fewer shops. The busy Praça da Matriz by the cathedral is the main hub of city communications, with buses to local points around the city and suburbs; another good connection point for city buses and taxis is the east side of Avenida Getúlio Vargas just north of Avenida Sete de Setembro.

Along Avenida Sete de Setembro

The Catedral de Nossa Senhora da Conceição (more commonly known as Igreja Matriz) on Avenida Sete de Setembro is a relatively plain building, surprisingly untouched by the orgy of adornment that struck the rest of the city – though judging by the number of people who use it, it plays a more active role in the life of the city than many more showy buildings. The original eighteenth-century cathedral was destoyed by fire in 1850, and the present building dates from the mid-nineteenth century. Around the cathedral is the Praça da Matriz, a shady park popular with local courting couples, hustlers and sleeping drunks. There are a number of outdoor bars here, open in the daytime only.

About 500m west of the cathedral along Avenida Sete de Setembro is the Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Amazonas (Mon–Fri 2–5.30pm), Rua Bernardo Ramos 135. Founded in 1917 on one of the city’s oldest streets, the building is now a heritage site and has been recently restored. The institute’s small museum includes a collection of ceramics from various tribes, a range of insect displays and indigenous tools like stone axes and hunting equipment.

The Museu do Homem do Norte (Museum of Northern Man; Mon–Thurs 9am–noon & 1–5pm, Fri 1–5pm), in the opposite direction at Av. Sete de Setembro 1385, near Avenida Joaquim Nabuco, offers a quick overview of human life and ecology in the Amazon region. Also worth at least a quick visit is the Centro Cultural Palácio Rio Negro (Tues–Sun 4–9pm; free), a gorgeous colonial-period mansion which houses the archives (manuscripts, drawings and plans) of the nineteenth-century Portuguese naturalist and scientist, Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira. The centre also hosts a wide range of exhibitions, drama and events, and has a good bookstore.

The excellent Museu do Índio, Rua Duque de Caxias 356 (Mon–Fri 8am–noon & 2–5pm, Sat 8am–noon; $2), lies about 500m further east along Avenida Sete de Setembro. The museum is run by the Salesian Sisters, who have long-established missions along the Rio Negro, especially with the Tukano tribe. There are excellent, carefully presented displays, with exhibits ranging from sacred ritual masks and inter-village communication drums to fine ceramics, superb palm-frond weavings and even replicas of Indian dwellings. Neatly complementing this collection is the Museu Amazônico da Universidade do Amazonas, to the north of the centre at Rua Ramos Ferreira 1036, which houses a small collection of sixteenth-century documents and engravings relating to the first explorations of the interior.

Around the docks

Since it’s the docks that have created Manaus, it seems logical to start your exploration here – and it’s certainly the most atmospheric part of town. The port itself is an unforgettable spectacle. A constant throng of activity stretches along the riverfront, while the ships tied up at the docks bob serenely up and down. Boats are getting ready to leave, or having just arrived are busy unloading. People cook fish at stalls to sell to the hungry sailors and their passengers, or to the workers once they’ve finished their shift of carrying cargo from the boats to the distribution market. Hectic and impossibly complex and anarchic as it appears to the unaccustomed eye, the port of Manaus is in fact very well organized, if organically so. During the day there’s no problem wandering around, and it’s easy enough to find out which boats are going where just by asking around. At night, however, this can be a dangerous area and is best avoided: many of the river men carry guns.

From the Praça Adalberto Valle, the impressive Customs House (Mon–Fri 8am–1pm) stands between you and the floating docks. Erected in 1906, the building was shipped over from Britain in prefabricated blocks. The floating docks, too, were built by a British company, at the beginning of the twentieth century. To cope with the river rising over a 14m range, the concrete pier is supported on pontoons which rise and fall to allow even the largest ships to dock here all year round (the highest recorded level of the river so far was in 1953, when it rose some 30m above sea level).

Following Rua Marquês de Santa Cruz down towards the new docks will bring you to the covered Mercado Municipal Adolfo Lisboa, whose elegant Art Nouveau roof was designed by Eiffel during the rubber boom and is a copy of the former Les Halles market in Paris. Here tropical fruit and vegetables, jungle herbs, scores of different fresh fishes and Indian craft goods are jumbled together on sale. Just to the east of this market is the wholesale port distribution market, whose traders buy goods from incoming boats and sell them on wholesale to shops, market stall-holders and restaurants. There’s also a substantial number of retail traders here where you too can buy the goods at prices only a little over wholesale. It’s at its busiest first thing in the morning; by the afternoon most of the merchants have closed shop, and the place looks abandoned. In the early 1990s, this market was modernized – turning rat-infested wood and mayhem into concrete-based organized chaos. Much of the original charm has given way to the clinicality of the twentieth century, but the port and markets are still fascinating places to wander.

Commercial centre and the Opera House

Things are almost as busy in Manaus’s downtown commercial centre as at the docks, but although it starts only a few metres inland the atmosphere is totally different. Essentially an electronics market which has evolved out of the Free Trade Zone era, this is the hub of the modern city. Everything from shoes to hi-fis can be bought – very cheap by Brazilian standards, but expensive for foreigners given the current exchange rate.

The city’s most famous symbol, the Teatro Amazonas or Opera House (Mon–Sat 9am–4pm; $4 including guided tour; tel 092/622-2420), seems even more extraordinary coming in the midst of this rampant commercialism. The whole incongruous, magnificent thing, designed in a pastiche of Italian Renaissance style by a Lisbon architectural firm, cost in the region of $3 million. After twelve years of building, with virtually all the materials – apart from the regional wood – brought from Europe, the Opera House was finally completed in 1896. Its main feature, the fantastic cupola, was created from 36,000 tiles imported from Alsace in France. The theatre’s main curtain, painted in Paris by Brazilian artist, Crispim do Amaral, represents the theme of the meeting of the waters and the local Indian water goddess Iara. The four painted pillars on the ceiling depict the Eiffel tower in Paris, giving visitors the impression, as they look upwards, that they are actually underneath the tower itself. The chandeliers are of Italian crystal and French bronze, and the theatre’s seven hundred seats and its main columns and the balconies are made of English cast iron. If you include the dome, into which the original curtain is pulled up in its entirety, the stage is a vertical 75m high.

Major restorations have taken place in 1929, 1960, 1974 and, most recently, in 1990, when the outside was returned from blue to its original pink. Looking over the upstairs balcony down onto the road in front of the Opera House, you can see the black driveway made from a special blend of rubber, clay and sand, originally to dampen the noise of horses and carriages as they arrived. Yet the building is not just a relic, and it hosts regular concerts, including in April the Festa da Manaus, initiated in 1997 to celebrate thirty years of the Zona Franca.

In front of the Teatro, the wavy black-and-white mosaic designs of the Praça São Sebastião are home to the “Monument to the Opening of the Ports”, a marble and granite creation with four ships that represent four continents – America, Europe, Africa and Asia/Australasia – and children who symbolize the people of those continents. Across the praça is the beautiful little Igreja de São Sebastião, built in 1888, which, like many other churches in Brazil, has only one tower due to the nineteenth-century tax payable by churches with two towers. Nearby is the Palácio da Justiça, which was supposedly modelled on Versailles.

Some three blocks further away from the river, up Rua Tapajós, you’ll find the old Central Post Office, another imposing reminder of the glorious years of the rubber boom. On the pavement around the back there’s an ornate, much photographed antique postbox, dated 1889.

Out of the centre

The most popular and most widely touted day-trip around Manaus is to the meeting of the waters, some 10km downstream, where the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimões meet to form the Rio Amazonas. For several kilometres beyond the point where they join, the waters of the two rivers continue to flow separately: the muddy yellow of the Solimões contrasting sharply with the black of the Rio Negro. It’s a strange sight, and one well worth seeing. If you’re going under your own steam, take the “Vila Burity” bus (#713) from Praça da Matriz to the end of the line, where there is a free half-hourly government ferry over the river, passing the meeting of the waters.

Most tours to the meeting of the waters leave the docks at Manaus and pass by the shantytown of Educandos and the Rio Negro riverside industries before heading out into the main river course. Almost all will also stop in at the Parque Ecólogico Janauary, an ecological park some 7km from Manaus on one of the main local tributaries of the Rio Negro. Usually you’ll be transferred to smaller motorized canoes to explore its creeks (igarapés), flooded forest lands (igapós) and abundant vegetation.

One of the highlights of the area is the abundance of Victoria Regia, the extraordinary giant floating lily for which Manaus is famous. Found mostly in shallow lakes, it flourishes above all in the rainy months. The plant, named after Queen Victoria by an English naturalist in the nineteenth century, has huge leaves – some over a metre across – with a covering of thorns on their underside, as protection from the teeth of plant-eating fish. The flowers are white on the first day of their life, rose-coloured on the second, and on the third they begin to wilt: at night the blooms close, imprisoning any insects that have wandered in, and releasing them again as they open with the morning sun. In the rainy season you’ll explore the creeks and flood lands by boat; during the dry season – between September and January – it’s possible to walk around.

The river beach at Praia Ponta Negra, about 15km northwest of Manaus near the Hotel Tropical, is another very popular local excursion, and at weekends is packed with locals. It’s an enjoyable place to go for a swim, with plenty of bars and restaurants serving freshly cooked river fish. The beach is at its best between September and March, when the river is low and exposes a wide expanse of sand, but even when the rains bring higher waters and the beach almost entirely disappears, plenty of people come to eat and drink. Soltur’s Ponta Negra bus (#120) leaves every half hour: catch it by the cathedral on Praça da Matriz.

The nearby military-run CIGS Zoo (Tues–Sun 8am–5pm; $1), Estrada Ponta Negra 750, is also an army jungle training centre, and many of the animals in it were captured, so they say, on military exercises out in the forest. The zoo has been recently redesigned to cater better for visitors, and you can expect to see alligators, monkeys, macaws and snakes among its collection of over three hundred animals. To get there take the #120, or the “Compensa” or “São Jorge” bus from the military college on Avenida Epaminondas.

The Parque do Mindú, out in the direction of the airport, is the city’s largest expanse of public greenery, incorporating educational trails (on which visitors can walk along suspended walkways), an artesanato shop and an exhibition centre. Closer to the city centre, the Bosque da Ciência, Alameda Cosme Ferreira 1756, Aleixo (Tues–Fri 9am–noon & 2–4.30pm, Sat, Sun & holidays 9am–5pm; www.ciam.rnp.br), is an ecological park created by the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas de Amazônia (National Institute for Amazon Research; INPA); you can expect to see otters, manatees, monkeys, snakes and birds in amongst the rainforest plants. Both sites are easiest reached by taxi, but you can also get there on buses #508, #424, #505 or #504. INPA are based at Av. A. Araújo 1756 (daily 9am–noon & 2–5pm; tel 092/643-3377), and run free two-hour video screenings at weekends (at 10am and 2pm). A taxi ride away from here, there’s more wildlife at the Museu de Ciências Naturais da Amazônia, Colônia Cachoeira Grande, Estrada Belém (Mon–Sat 9am–5pm; $2), including fish – in a 37,000-gallon aquarium – butterflies and insects.

The waterfalls of Cachoeira do Tarumã, about 20km northwest of the city, are the last of the local beauty spots within easy reach of Manaus. They don’t offer unspoiled beauty any more, thanks to commercialization and weekend crowds, but the place is fun, there’s good swimming, and on busy weekends you’ll often find live music in the bars. The cascades themselves, supplied by the Rio Negro, are relatively small white-water affairs which more or less disappear in the rainy season (April to August). Soltur buses (#11) run approximately every twenty minutes from the Praça da Matriz, taking about half an hour.

Jungle trips from Manaus

Manaus is the obvious place in the Brazilian Amazon to find a jungle river trip to suit most people’s requirements. It’s not necessarily the best place if you are serious about spotting a wide range of wildlife, but it does offer a range of organized tours bringing visitors into close contact with some of the world’s finest tropical rainforest. Unfortunately, though, since Manaus has been a big city for a long time, the forest in the immediate vicinity is far from virgin. Over the last millennia it has been explored by Indians, missionaries, rubber gatherers, colonizing extractors, settlers, urban folk from Manaus and, more recently, quite a steady flow of eco-interested tourists.

The amount and nature of the wildlife you get to see on a standard jungle tour depends mainly on how far away from Manaus you go and how long you can devote to the trip. Birds like macaws, jabarus and toucans can generally be spotted, and you might see alligators, snakes and a few species of monkey on a three-day trip (though you can see many of these anyway at the Parque Janauary). For even a remote chance of glimpsing wild deer, tapirs, armadillos or wild cats then a week-long trip is the minimum, preferably more. On any trip, make sure that you’ll get some time in the smaller channels in a canoe, as the sound of a motor is a sure way of scaring every living thing out of sight.

There are a few Brazilian jungle terms every visitor should be familiar with: a regatão is a travelling boat-cum-general store, which can provide a fascinating introduction to the interior if you can strike up an agreeable arrangement with one of their captains; an igarapé is a narrow river or creek flowing from the forest into one of the larger rivers (though by narrow around Manaus they mean less than 1km wide); an igapó is a patch of forest which is seasonally flooded; a furo is a channel joining two rivers and therefore a short cut for canoes; a paraná, on the other hand, is a branch of the river which leaves the main channel and returns further downstream, creating a river island.

There are scores of different jungle tour companies in Manaus offering very similar services and the competition is intense. On the downside this means you’ll get hassled by touts all over town, and the sales patter is unrelenting. On the positive side this means that you’ll be able to bargain the price down a bit; large groups can always get a better deal than people travelling alone. Your best bet is to shop around, talk to other tourists who have already been on trips and be wary of parting with wads of cash before you know exactly what you’ll be getting in return. If you have time to spare, you could try simply naming your price to a selection of tour companies, and see what happens. You can generally get a tour cheaper if you’re prepared to hang around for the operator to find other tourists to make up a larger group.

It’s always a good idea to pin your tour operator down to giving you specific details of the trip on paper, preferably in the form of a contract (something offered anyway by the better operators such as Green Planet Tours), and you should always ask about the accommodation arrangements, what the food and drink will consist of, and exactly where you are going; ask to see photos. A circular trip may sound attractive, but the scenery won’t change very much, whatever the name of the rio. You should also check that the guide speaks English, whether the operator has an environmental policy and what insurance cover they offer (usually nil in the case of the cheaper operators). Check, too, to see if the company is registered with EMBRATUR (if they are it is much easier to make a claim against them if something goes wrong). Ask what is not included in the price, and whether you can get your money back, or part of it, if the trip turns out to be disappointing. On a more upmarket tour, you should check that binoculars and reference books are provided on the boat, if you haven’t already got your own, and, on any tour, you of course have the right to expect that any promises made – regarding maximum group size, activities and so on – are kept. If not, then a promise to complain to EMAMTUR, the state tourist office, may give you some leverage in obtaining redress.

The most dependable and comfortable way to visit the jungle is to take a package tour that involves a number of nights in a jungle lodge – though for the more adventurous traveller the experience can be a little tame. The lodges invariably offer hotel-standard accommodation, full board and a range of activities including alligator spotting, piranha fishing, trips by canoe, as well as transport to and from Manaus. You can either book a jungle lodge tour through a tour operator, or approach the lodges direct at their offices in Manaus.

If you want to forgo organized tours entirely and travel independently, milk boats are a very inexpensive way of getting about on the rivers around Manaus. These smaller vessels, rarely more than 20m long, spend their weeks serving the local riverine communities by delivering and transporting their produce. You can spend a whole day on one of these boats for as little as $10, depending on what arrangement you make with the captain. The best place to look for milk boats is down on Flutuante Três Estrelas, one of the wooden wharves behind the distribution market. Approach the ones that are obviously loading early in the morning of the day you want to go, or late in the afternoon of the day before. Other commercial boats bound for the interior – some of them preparing for trips up to a month long – can be found at the docks off the Mercado Municipal.

Getting there

Try to avoid arriving on a Sunday, when the city is very quiet, with few places open. If you arrive in Manaus by river, your boat will dock right in the heart of the city, either by the Mercado Municipal or a short way along in the floating port. If you’re arriving from Peru or Colombia, don’t forget to have your passport stamped at the Customs House, if you haven’t already done so in Tabatinga. The Rodoviária (tel 092/236-3409) is some 10km north of the centre: #306 buses run every twenty minutes down Avenida Constantino Nery, two streets from the bus station, to Praça da Matriz in the heart of town, or taxis cost around $10. The airport (Aeroporto de Eduardo Gomes; tel 092/652-1212 or 654-2044) is on Avenida Santos Dumont, 17km from town in the same direction. It is also served by bus #306 (first bus 5.30am, last bus around midnight; 40min); alternatively, take a taxi (around $15) or the 24-hour airport transfer minibus run by Geraldo Neto Mesquita (tel 092/232-9416 or mobile 983-6273; from $10).

The main EMAMTUR tourist office is next to the Palácio da Cultura at Av. Sete de Setembro 1546 (Mon–Fri 8am–6pm, Sat 8am–1pm; tel 092/633-2983 or 633-2850), and has a huge range of brochures, maps and information packs about Manaus and Amazonas. There is also an EMAMTUR agent at the airport (daily 8am–8pm; tel 092/652-1120), and a Fumtur office at Rua Bernardo Ramos 173 (Mon–Sat 9am–6pm; tel 092/622-4925), both of which also have reasonable brochures and some hotel information.

Eating and drinking

There are very few places in Manaus where you can sit down and enjoy any peace, and even the cafés and bars are too full to give you much elbow room. One advantage of the crowds is that there’s street food everywhere: especially around the docks, the Mercado Municipal and in busy downtown locations like the Praça da Matriz, where a plate of rice and beans with a skewer of freshly grilled meat or fish costs well under $2. One traditional dish you should definitely try here is tacacá – a soup that consists essentially of yellow manioc root juice in a hot spicy dried-shrimp sauce. It’s often mixed and served in traditional gourd bowls, cuias, and is usually sold in the late afternoons by tacacazeiras.

For your own food, there’s a supermarket at the corner of Avenida Joaquim Nabuco and Avenida Sete de Setembro, and another towards the market on Rua Rocha dos Santos. The following restaurants are closed Sundays unless otherwise stated, and be warned that prices in Manaus are roughly double what you might find in the rest of the country.

Anavilhaus, Av. Joaquim Nabuco 498. One of the cheapest places in town for good cooked meals. It’s a no-frills night dive stacked with beer crates, playing loud music all the time, but it serves excellent fish dishes – try the tucunaré. Open daily.
Canto da Peixada, Rua Emilio Moreira 1677. Considered by many to be Manaus’s best regional and river-fish restaurant, and therefore not cheap, but good value nonetheless.
Churrascaria Búfalo, Av. Joaquim Nabuco 628A. Excellent rodízio but expensive at $12 a head.
Fiorentina, Praça da Polícia. Upmarket Italian restaurant – good food but it’s expensive.
Floresteiro, Rua Dr Moreira, two doors down from Central Hotel. Basement place, strong on fish, and with good regional comida por kilo ($8 per kg) lunchtimes, and moderately priced à la carte evenings. Closed Sat evening as well as Sun.
Galo Carijó, Rua dos Andradas 536. Opposite the Hotel Dona Joana, this is a simple, inexpensive but excellent local fish restaurant and bar. Closed Sat evening.
Kaktus Churrascaria, Av. Getúlio Vargas, 4 blocks up from Av. Sete de Setembro. Cheap and open Sun.
Lanche Alternativa, Rua Marquês de Santa Cruz, by the Mercado Municipal. Grilled meat and beer accompanied by the biggest and loudest PA rig in Manaus. Open daily.
Mana’s, Rua Dr Moreira 76. Churrascaria and peixaria which has great salads amongst its self-service comida por kilo-style lunches.
Mandarim, Av. Eduardo Ribeiro 650, at the corner of Rua 24 de Maio. Excellent and reasonably priced Chinese restaurant, with a comida por kilo system for lunch and à la carte evenings (6–10.30pm). Their chopa (sizzling platter) dishes are recommended.
Mister Kilo, Av. Sete de Setembro next to Krystal Hotel, first floor. Popular and friendly lunchtime comida por kilo joint.
O Naturalista, Rua Sete de Setembro 752, 2nd floor. A large, clean and enjoyable vegetarian restaurant one block east from the cathedral. Open Mon–Fri lunchtime.
Scarola Pizzaria, Rua Dez de Julho 739. Away from the action a little, this is a pleasant pizzaria, with a nice patio, good service and reasonable food.
Suzurau, Av. Boulevard Alvaro Maia 1683, Praça 14, 3km east of the city along Av. Sete de Setembro. This very good Japanese restaurant is the best of the three in Manaus. Closed Tues.
Xamégo, block 7 of Getúlio Vargas at the corner with Dez de Julho. Small, inexpensive restaurant which specializes in fish dishes but has a reasonably good and very wide-ranging menu.

Nightlife

Like most large port towns, Manaus is busiest in the early mornings, and again at night, with plenty of bars, clubs and other venues that are worth exploring if you’re in town for a few days; Friday editions of Amazonas Em Tempo carry fairly comprehensive listings.

The best – and rowdiest – bars are bunched around and in the Mercado Municipal, and along the entire length of Avenida Joaquim Nabuco south of Avenida Sete de Setembro. The usual starting place, for beer, snacks and a lively atmosphere, is the bar Você Decide, hemmed in by a wrought-iron fence on the corner of Avenida Joaquim Nabuco and Rua Quintino Bocaiúva, opposite the Pensão Sulista. Open daily to around 1 or 2am, it’s usually very busy and has pool tables and loud music; for the unwary, it’s probably worth mentioning that it’s frequented by ladies (and gentlemen) of the night. Around the Mercado Municipal, the popular Lanche Alternativa sometimes has live music. Further around the port, to the west of Praça da Matriz on Rua M. Sousa, a couple of even louder places – Holanda Bar and Recanto da Natureza – stay open all night. There are also a number of inexpensive bars around the Praça Sebastião, including the Bar do Amandó in front of the Opera House, which frequently has locals playing guitars and singing inside.

As to clubs, the most exciting are undoubtedly those around Praia Ponta Negra. Their names change frequently, though the music is invariably a danceable blend of old and modern sambas – it’s worth coming just to see the formation dancing of the crowds. Given Manaus’s prohibitive taxi fares, most of the Praia Ponta Negra clubs remain open all night, so you might as well bring a towel for a sobering early morning dip in the river. Similarly distant is the relatively new Zazoueira Disco, located out near the airport on Estrada Torquato Tapajós at Km 12, Flores. This is one of the best straight clubs in town, but drinks and entrance are expensive. Not as chic, but far more central, are the touristy Jet Set, Rua Dez de Julho 439, near the Opera House, where most foreigners seem to end up and a lot of prostitutes hang out; and, nearby, the more pop-oriented Mykonos Disco, facing the Opera House at the corner of Rua José. Clemente and Avenida Eduardo Ribeiro. The Cheik Clube, Av. Getúlio Vargas 773, has a solid reputation for modern dance music (house and techno as well as salsa). Brazilian music venues include the Sabor Brasil Clube, Rua Leonardo 1840, for samba (tel 092/234-4520), and the Havai Club, Estrada da Ponta Negra (tel 092/651-2797), which is great for any sort of dancing. For a more studenty feel and some live bands, try Coração Blue, Estrada da Ponta Negra 3701, Km6 (starts 10pm; tel 092/984-1391).

Accommodation

Plenty of travellers end up in Manaus, so there’s a wide range of places to stay, with a number of perfectly reasonable cheap hotels, especially in the area around Avenida Joaquim Nabuco and Rua dos Andradas. The downtown centre is just a few blocks from here, with the docks for boats up and down the Amazon and Rio Negro. Even cheaper are those along Rua José Paranaguá, two blocks north of Rua dos Andradas, though this road can be unsafe at night. If you want to camp, the only secure option is beyond the Tropical Hotel at the sites around Praia Ponta Negra.

Best Western Hotel, Rua Marcílio Dias 217 (tel 092/622-7700, fax 622-2576, www.bestwestern.com.br/manaus). Very plush, with apartments and suites; the best hotel in central Manaus and reasonable value, but no pool. $70 and over.
Hotel Janelas Verdes, Rua L. Coelho 216 (tel 092/233-1222). Tucked away, this is one of Manaus’s best hotels, a small, traditional family-run place with fifteen neat and comfortable rooms, much nicer than its multistorey rivals on Avenida Getúlio Vargas. Great breakfasts. $50–70.
Líder Hotel, Av. Sete de Setembro 827 (tel 092/234-1966 or 234-4066, fax 232-5439). In the commercial centre, a calm, upmarket place, but it lacks a pool. $50–70.
Plaza Hotel, Av. Getúlio Vargas 215 (tel 092/232-7766, fax 234-0647, plazahot@internext.com.br). Next door to the similar but twice-as-expensive Hotel Imperial, the towering Plaza has well-appointed rooms and a pool – good value, though at this price the service could be better. $50–70.
Tropical Hotel, Estrada da Ponta Negra (tel 092/658-5000, fax 658-5026). This popular five-star hotel, 15km northwest of town and 8km from the airport, is right by the chic city beach, Praia Ponta Negra. Facilities include pool, tennis courts, good nightlife, fine river beaches and even water-skiing on the Rio Negro, and the service is excellent. The Tropical has its own buses from the airport; from downtown, take the #120 bus from Praça da Matriz. $90–125.