Manaus Flights

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The main airport of the Amazonas State is situated in Manaus. Flights from other parts of Brazil including Santarem, Belem, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo as well as international flight from North America arrive here. Smaller aircraft serve the towns within Amazonas. Charter flights are also available.

...and you might require one of these tiny floatplanes to get around the really, really remote jungle areas. Amazonas is a da*n big state, and they haven't quite gotten around to extending any superhighways out to most of it...give them time though, they're working on this idea, just for you...

Manaus may be a city of more than 1.5 million people, but it is still very remote and isolated from just about everywhere else. Waaaaah! ***NO MORE FLYING HERE DIRECTLY FROM MIAMI***, at least until Varig reinstates that route...oh please, please, please!?! Coming from North America then, you will likely have to backtrack down through Sao Paulo and back up again. C'est la vie. No one said it would be easy to reach this city primeval. And really, would you love it as much if it were a cakewalk?

The river journey is by far the cheapest way of travelling between Brazil and Peru. There are reasonable facilities for visitors in the border town of Tabatinga and the adjacent Colombian town of Leticia. All boats have to stop at one of these ports, and most will terminate at the border whichever direction they’ve come from. The boat trip from Manaus to Tabatinga – five to eight days upstream – costs around $65 inclusive of food.

The downstream journey, which is often very crowded, takes three to four days and costs upward of $45. Five large boats currently ply the river on a regular basis, all pretty similar and with good facilities (toilets with paper, showers, mineral water and enough food). Smaller boats also occasionally do the trip, but more often terminate at Tefé, from where other small boats continue. On the other side of the border, the boat trip to Iquitos from Tabatinga costs around $25–35 and takes three or four days. Coming downstream from Iquitos to Tabatinga ($20) gives you one and a half days on the river.

There are also more popular super-fast sixteen-seater powerboats connecting Tabatinga and Leticia with Iquitos. They cost upwards of $50 and take roughly ten to twelve hours. Small planes also connect Iquitos with Santa Rosa, an insignificant Peruvian border settlement just a short boat ride over the river from Tabatinga and Leticia.

Manaus has one of the most modern airports in Brazil, “Aeroporto Internacional Eduardo Gomes”, 15km from the city centre. The airport links Manaus with all the major cities in the country.

The traffic is dangerous and disorganized. To rent a car is therefore not feasible unless you are a daredevil driver. Taxi drivers are rather expensive in Manaus and not very trustworthy. They will try to rip you off. But if you are not on an organized tour, which provides for a private bus you might have to use a taxi because public transportation is complicated and disorganized too.

The locals drive like maniacs, stop signs and signals are suggestions only, lane stripes are purely decorative. Just forget the rent car and take the taxi.