Everything you need to know to visit the Amazon, including Manaus, Novo Airão, and Anavilhanas National Park.
I’d long dreamed of visiting the Brazilian Amazon. This vast region of rivers and rainforest we hear so much about, whether because of its natural beauty and biodiversity or the constant threats hanging over it, had existed only in my imagination for years. I have to admit I felt a bit like an imposter: how could I, a Brazilian who has traveled to more than 50 countries, have never been to the Amazon?
But eventually the time comes! I headed to Manaus and immersed myself in the rainforest, using the town of Novo Airão, about 2.5 hours from the capital of Amazonas state, as my base. It was surprisingly easy (and magical) to explore river beaches, boat through the igapós (flooded forests) and hike deep into the jungle, finally seeing the wildlife up close in this forest we’ve heard about our entire lives.
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In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to plan your Amazon trip: from the best time to visit and how to get there to where to stay for every budget and the tours you shouldn’t miss.
I visited the Amazon in January and happened to catch the transition between seasons, which meant I got to enjoy the best of both worlds: swimming at the beaches and boating among the trees in the igapós. So, let’s dive in! Visiting the Amazon is easier, more affordable, and even more rewarding than you might imagine.
We combined this trip with a visit to Alter do Chão, check out the full guide to this other Amazonian paradise.
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Fast facts
Best base: Manaus + Novo Airão (2h30 by car from Manaus)
Best time to visit: dry season (Sep–Feb) for beaches; wet season (Mar–Aug) for igapós
Ideal duration: 4–7 days
Best for: travelers who love nature, history, local culture, wildlife, and stunning scenery
Internet (4G and Wi-Fi): good in cities; limited at jungle lodges (availability varies by property, though some high-end lodges have Starlink)
Traveling with kids? Absolutely!
Level of difficulty: low to very low.
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Manaus, the gateway to the Amazon
Manaus is the perfect starting point for an Amazon trip. Experiencing the Meeting of the Waters between the Negro and Solimões rivers and visiting the Amazonas Theater are among the highlights of the area.
I originally planned to spend three days in Manaus, but because of some personal and health issues, we had to cut the trip short. Instead, we spent the rest of our trip exploring Anavilhanas National Park in Novo Airão and Alter do Chão, in Pará.
Our flight landed in Manaus in the late afternoon. We spent one night in the city and left early the next morning for Novo Airão.
Here’s everything I had planned for our time in Manaus. When you go, I’d love to hear about your experience — send me a message on Instagram @danae_explore!
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How to get to Manaus
The easiest way to get to Manaus is by plane. Eduardo Gomes International Airport (MAO) has flights from major Brazilian cities such as São Paulo (direct flights are only available from Guarulhos Airport), Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Campinas, Fortaleza, Belém, and Belo Horizonte. At the time of this writing, Manaus also has international connections to Bogotá, Panama City, Miami, and Venezuela.
We flew from São Paulo’s Congonhas Airport and connected through Brasília. On the way back, we flew from Manaus to Santarém, which is about 30 km from our next destination, Alter do Chão.
For travelers looking for a more adventurous Amazon experience, it’s also possible to reach Manaus by river. The journey from Belém to Manaus along the Amazon River takes between four and six days, depending on the type of boat and river conditions. Two operators I came across were Bellturismo and Macamazon (I haven’t personally used them, but I’m sharing the links in case you’re interested).
The main overland route to Manaus is via BR-319 from Porto Velho, in Rondônia state. The trip is roughly 900 km and includes ferry crossings, but parts of the road are in very poor condition. During the rainy season, some stretches can become impassable for regular vehicles, and even with a 4×4, road conditions can be rough.
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Where to stay in Manaus
We stayed at Hotel Chez Les Rois Guesthouse, a very simple place that was fine for the price. Since we were only there for one night, it did the job. For a longer stay, I’d probably choose something more central.
The best area to stay in is around Largo de São Sebastião, a lively neighborhood that’s generally considered safe, with lots of restaurants, bars, and shops, plus easy access to public transportation. Some places that caught my attention were Hotel Villa Amazônia, which has a swimming pool and is great if you’re spending a few days in Manaus, and Juma Opera, one of the city’s top hotels, right next to the Amazonas Theater. For more budget-friendly stays, Casa Perpétua Hotel d’Charm seems like a good-value option, as does Seringal Hotel.
Like most large Brazilian cities, Manaus also has plenty of familiar hotel chains. The ones that seemed to offer the best value — and that we’ve had good experiences with elsewhere — were Intercity Manaus and Quality Hotel Manaus.
Check prices and availability on the map:
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What to do in Manaus
Here’s what we had planned for Manaus:
Day 1: Boat tour to the Meeting of the Waters, where the Negro and Solimões rivers run side by side without mixing. Most tours also include a visit to an Indigenous community and activities like pirarucu fishing, dolphin watching, and swimming in the Rio Negro, so you get a little taste of different Amazon experiences in a single day. If you want to book ahead, you can reserve tours online through these links but it’s also easy to book directly at the port in Manaus with local operators.
Day 2: Exploring Manaus and its museums: Centro Cultural Palácio da Justiça (Palace of Justice Cultural Center), Teatro Amazonas (Amazonas Theater), Centro Cultural dos Povos da Amazônia (Cultural Center of the Peoples of the Amazon), Mercado Municipal Adolpho Lisboa (Adolpho Lisboa Municipal Market), Centro Cultural Palácio Rio Negro (Rio Negro Palace Cultural Center), Museu da Amazônia – MUSA (Amazon Museum). I always like to start exploring a city with a walking tour, it’s one of the best ways to learn about local history and what gives the city its character. After that, you can walk or take an Uber to the other attractions. If you’re still up for more, Praia da Lua or Ponta Negra are great spots to end the day.
Day 3: Presidente Figueiredo waterfalls. Located about 150 km from Manaus (roughly a two-hour drive), Presidente Figueiredo has been gaining attention for its waterfalls and natural swimming holes. To make the most of the experience, it’s worth spending at least one night in town. But if you’re short on time, there are also day trips from Manaus. Check the options on Civitatis or Get Your Guide and follow your guide’s recommendations, since the best waterfalls and swimming spots vary depending on the season and river levels.
After that, we continued our Amazon trip in Alter do Chão — click and check it out!
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Novo Airão and the Anavilhanas National Park
Novo Airão is a small town on the banks of the Rio Negro where tourism is now one of the town’s main sources of income. The town itself has very simple infrastructure while still holding onto the feel of a traditional Amazon riverside community.
Anavilhanas is the second-largest river archipelago in the world, with more than 400 islands. Created in 1981, the national park protects over 3,500 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest.
With its white-sand beaches, winding rivers, dense rainforest, and endless freshwater, the Amazon is, to me, one of the most special places in Brazil. Beyond the unforgettable experiences, this kind of trip creates a real connection with nature while reminding us how important it is to protect it.
The water of the Rio Negro is extremely dark, but it’s clean and pleasantly warm. Thanks to its acidic pH, mosquitoes don’t thrive here. Believe it or not, we didn’t see a single mosquito during our entire stay in the region.
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How to get to Novo Airão and Anavilhanas National Park
The trip from Manaus to Novo Airão takes about two and a half hours by car or roughly nine hours by boat — an overnight journey where passengers sleep in hammocks they bring themselves. The adventurous option definitely crossed our minds, but comfort won in the end, so we decided to drive. Our accommodation in Novo Airão arranged the transfers for us.
It’s also possible to travel from Manaus to Novo Airão by speedboat, which takes around three hours, but there wasn’t one available on the days we needed it. I was also a little worried the kids might get seasick. The journey follows the Rio Negro upstream and must be an incredible experience.
For an even more scenic option, you can arrive by seaplane in about 50 minutes. Everyone says the aerial views of the rainforest are unforgettable, and I can only imagine what it must be like to fly over the Amazon like that.
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Where to stay in Novo Airão
Novo Airão has accommodation options for every travel style and budget.
There are beautiful boutique jungle lodges — the kind of place you see on Instagram and immediately want to book. Naturally, once I checked the prices, they turned out to be firmly in luxury treehouse territory. In other words, way beyond our budget.
Still, if you’re willing to splurge or happen to find a good deal, spending a few days at one of these lodges would be an unforgettable experience. Take a look at Mirante do Gavião and Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge — they honestly look unreal!
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In town, there are more affordable places to stay. Pousada Bela Vista sits right on the banks of the Rio Negro, near the center, while Local Hostel Novo Airão is a great choice for budget travelers. Amazonia Park Suites is a little farther from downtown but seems to have the best structure of the three and offers great value.
We stayed at a fantastic Airbnb called Madada House. From the outside, it looks like a traditional Amazonian home, but inside it’s beautifully decorated, modern, and fully equipped, with everything you could possibly need, plus an incredibly helpful team. And, of course, reliable Wi-Fi. The same company also manages other houses in town, including Anavilhanas House (up to seven guests), Jaú House (for two people), and Carabinani House (up to six guests).
One big advantage of staying in town is the good cell phone signal. At the time, only Claro had coverage, while other carriers only worked through roaming. At the jungle lodges, Wi-Fi is usually your only option.
Note: While researching this trip, I also looked into jungle lodges located deeper in the rainforest. Many had no cell phone signal at all, and internet access was limited to a few hours a day in certain common areas. More recently, some lodges have installed satellite internet. If staying connected matters to you, it’s definitely worth confirming the situation before booking.
How about checking accommodation options in the Brazilian Amazon right now?
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When to visit the Amazon?
Anavilhanas National Park can be visited year-round, but the region has two very distinct seasons:
– Dry season (September to February): this is when the famous white-sand beaches appear throughout the archipelago.
– High-water season (March to August, peaking in June and July): during these months, the beaches disappear and the main attraction becomes boating through the flooded igapós, often referred to as enchanted forests.
We visited the Amazon in January, right at the end of the dry season. Many beaches were already partially underwater, but we still managed to enjoy a few of them — especially Camaleão Beach, our favorite. Both times we went there, we had the entire stretch of sand to ourselves. It felt like our own private paradise.
At the end of the day, after returning from our boat tours, we’d still have time to relax at Orla Beach in Novo Airão, right across from our accomodation near Flutuante dos Botos.
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Can you swim in the Rio Negro?
At first, I was skeptical. Was this dark water really clean? But then I thought: where else would I ever get the chance to swim in a river like this?
So I jumped in — and after that, I didn’t want to get out. The water is amazing, trust me.
In the end, visiting the Amazon in January turned out to be a great choice because we got a bit of both seasons.
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What is the weather like in the Amazon in January?
The Amazon is hot and humid year-round, but from June to November, rainfall tends to ease up a bit. When we visited in January, we had quick rain showers almost every day, but they usually passed as fast as they arrived and never really disrupted our plans. And yes, we got caught in the rain everywhere: on the boat, at the beach, walking through town, back at our accommodation, everywhere.
Is it hot? Absolutely. Humid? Very. Is it worse than Rio de Janeiro in the summer? Honestly, not at all.
So yes, be prepared: it’s hot — really hot — and the sun is strong, but there’s usually a good breeze, and the daily rain helps cool things down. I’ve honestly felt hotter in Rio than I did in the Amazon.
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Is it difficult to visit the Amazon?
One question I get all the time is whether visiting the Amazon is difficult.
The answer is no — not at all. Even on a fairly simple trip like ours, we never ran into any problems. Of course, it all depends on your comfort level and budget. If you arrive by seaplane and stay at one of the luxury jungle lodges, it’ll probably be an unforgettable experience.
But even if you’re traveling on a tighter budget, like we were, visiting the Amazon is still surprisingly easy. The drive from Manaus to Novo Airão is straightforward, there are accommodation options for every budget, plenty of good places to eat, and the tours are safe, relaxed, and well organized.
The town itself is simple, but everything works surprisingly well. You can travel comfortably without spending a fortune.
In short, visiting the Amazon is much easier than most people imagine — and no matter your budget, it’s an incredible experience.
Please note that, as Brazilians, we didn’t have any communication issues since we speak Portuguese. In general, English isn’t widely spoken in the Amazon — or in Brazil overall — but Brazilians are incredibly friendly and genuinely love welcoming foreign visitors. People will usually go out of their way to communicate and make themselves understood, and when all else fails, Google Translate is always there to save the day.
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Where to Eat in Novo Airao
One of my favorite parts of traveling is trying the local food. Since we were staying in a very comfortable house, we often ordered delivery from local restaurants — and honestly, it was a great decision.
We ordered several times from Sabor do Sul Restaurant, which serves regional Amazonian dishes. We tried local specialties like pirarucu, tambaqui, tucunaré, and free-range chicken. Absolutely worth trying.
Another option is Flor do Luar Restaurant,a floating restaurant on the Rio Negro. We didn’t make it there ourselves, but it looks like a beautiful spot and the views seem amazing.
For a quick meal, we stopped at Saloon Ajuricaba. The sandwiches were excellent — although, to be fair, the amount of food we ordered at lunch easily fed us for the rest of the day.
The town also has its own microbrewery, Sarapó Cervejas Amazônicas, and of course we had to try the local beer. That’s one of my favorite things about traveling: discovering not only the local food, but the local beer too.
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How many days to stay and what to do in Anavilhanas National Park
Our days in Novo Airão quickly settled into a rhythm: wake up, have breakfast (our housekeeper brought us fresh bread every morning and prepared breakfast for us), head out on a boat tour, come back for lunch, rest for a while, then go for a walk around town and grab some ice cream before dinner. We’d usually end the day relaxing in a hammock or sitting on the balcony.
Honestly, not a bad routine at all. And believe me, you don’t need to spend a fortune to experience the Amazon comfortably and stress-free.
There’s no shortage of things to do in Novo Airão. At any time of year, you can experience the Amazon’s incredible wildlife and landscapes, take boat rides through the flooded forest, go on jungle walks, swim in the Rio Negro, see pink river dolphins up close at the Flutuante dos Botos, visit traditional riverside communities, and during the dry season, spend time on the stunning river beaches.
I’d recommend spending between two and four days in Novo Airão:
Day 1: Visit the Flutuante dos Botos and take a boat tour through Anavilhanas National Park, including stops at riverside communities.
Day 2: Visit Pedra do Sanduíche and hike to Gruta do Madadá, with time to stop at a beach along the way — if possible, try to visit Camaleão Beach. In the evening, take a night boat tour for wildlife spotting.
If you have extra days, you can add more activities depending on your interests: beaches, hiking, canoeing, wildlife watching, and more. Also worth visiting is Velho Airão, the ruins of the town’s original settlement.
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Flutuante dos botos (pink river dolphin viewing)
The Flutuante dos Botos was right in front of our accommodation, we only had to walk a few steps down to the banks of the Rio Negro.
Amazon river dolphins are the largest freshwater dolphins in the world, reaching up to 2.5 meters in length and weighing around 200 kg. Visiting the Flutuante dos Botos, which focuses on awareness and conservation of these animals, is one of the must-do experiences in Novo Airão.
Some dolphins, accustomed to returning several times a day for feeding, usually stay around the area, which basically meant we had dolphins right in front of us — plus a beach all to ourselves. It honestly felt surreal.
It’s important to remember, though, that these dolphins are wild and protected animals. No matter how comfortable they may seem around humans, they are not pets. Always keep a respectful distance and never try to touch or feed them.
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Boat trips on the Rio Negro
All tours in Anavilhanas revolve around the river, and you can customize the boat tours, with your boatman depending on what interests you most: scenic boat rides, jungle walks to see giant samaúma trees, longer hikes through the rainforest like the trail to Gruta do Madadá or the ruins of Velho Airão, or even multi-day expeditions to Jaú National Park.
Velho Airão is an old village abandoned in the 1950s. Local legend says the residents left because of an ant infestation, although the real reason was most likely the collapse of the rubber boom in the region.
No matter which tour you choose, one of the most fascinating parts is simply taking in the scenery: the scale of the forest, the incredible biodiversity, the endless shades of green, and the way the jungle and the river blend together. With a good guide, you’ll likely spot wildlife along the way too.
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Pedra do Sanduíche and Gruta do Madadá
One day, we headed out to explore Pedra do Sanduíche, an ancient rock formation that really does resemble layers of rock stacked on top of each other. From there, a beautiful trail winds through the rainforest toward the Gruta do Madadá, a group of sandstone formations estimated to be around 700 million years old.
We were four adults and three kids, between 7 and 10 years old, and the hike took us about an hour and a half each way.
On the boat ride back, we stopped at Praia do Camaleão for a refreshing swim.
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Rio Negro beaches
On one of our days in Novo Airão, we took a boat trip through the flooded igapós, while on another we explored the islands scattered across the Anavilhanas archipelago, stopping at Praia do Meio, Folharal, and Paraná da Onça. Along the way, we passed through countless channels, islands, and tiny islets, all incredibly beautiful.
If we’d had one more day, we definitely would have gone out on another boat tour. There’s always another stretch of river to explore, another hidden beach, another flooded forest, another channel disappearing into the jungle.
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Night wildlife-spotting tour
We also joined a night wildlife-spotting tour. We left by boat at dusk and navigated through the canals of Anavilhanas National Park in complete darkness. It was a new moon, and it felt like it was just us beneath the stars in the middle of the Amazon.
Along the way, we heard countless birds and spotted sloths, caimans, snakes, and several other animals. At one point, fish even jumped into our boat. It genuinely felt like an adventure.
Even though we saw plenty of wildlife and experienced the incredible biodiversity of the Amazon, spotting wildlife in the rainforest is very different from places like the Serengeti. Because of the dense vegetation, animals are much harder to spot.
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Traditional Amazon communities
It’s also possible to visit traditional riverside communities on guided boat tours. Unfortunately, because of restrictions in place at the time, we weren’t able to visit them ourselves.
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Contact information
Our boatmen were Ceará, Zezão, and Euler, all organized through Cilene (+55 92 99113-2444) from the Novo Airão boatmen’s association.
Whenever you can, try to book your tours directly with local providers instead of going through intermediaries, so your money directly supports the people who live there and help preserve what makes the region so special.
If you prefer using booking platforms, both Get Your Guide and Civitatis offer a wide range of tours in the region, and I’ve linked a few options throughout this article.
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Here are the websites I always use to plan my trips:
– 🛌 Accommodation: Booking
– ☀️ Tours & activities: Civitatis & Get Your Guide
– 📱 eSIM for mobile data: Airalo e-SIM – use promo code DANAE2375
– 🚗 Car rental: RentCars – use promo code DANAE
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All our posts about traveling in Brazil, be sure to check them out before planing a trip to my home country:
- Brazilian Amazon – How to visit the Amazon Rainforest
- What to do in Alter do Chão: Exploring amazonian beaches and rainforests in Brazil
- What to do in Chapada dos Guimaraes, Mato Grosso
- The best tours to do in Bonito, Brazil, in 4 days
- Ultimate Guide to Bonito: Exploring the Southern Brazilian Pantanal’s Hidden Paradise
- Complete guide to visiting Lençóis Maranhenses: Tips and essential itinerary
- Chapada das Mesas – Complete itinerary: what to do, where to stay, how to get there
- What to do in Pirenópolis: ecotourism and history in the interior of Goiás
- Chapada dos Veadeiros – Complete guide: best waterfalls, accommodations and many tips.
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Check out all our posts about traveling in Central and South America:
Colombia
- What to do in 3 days in Bogotá
- What to do in Cartagena de Indias – Colombia
- How to visit Tayrona National Park – the most beautiful beaches in mainland Colombia
- The best of Colombia – 12-day itinerary
Argentina
- Northern Argentina: a 10-day itinerary through Salta and Jujuy
- El Calafate and Perito Moreno Glacier – the best of Argentinan Patagonia
- The best of Ushuaia: a 4-day itinerary for spring and autumn
Chile
Belize
- One week in Belize: a perfect itinerary for first-time visitors
- What to do in Belize: the best of San Ignacio, Caye Ambergris and Caye Caulker
Guatemala
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