Manaus, with its million and average one of inhabitants, are the access door to the amazons Brazilian. It is an international harbor city, located to 1,500 km of his opening and only 40/80m over the level of the sea. One is a humid large city and not too clean.
Nevertheless, Manaus half has an urban infrastructure with so large bearing of metropolis of and an extensive network of hotels, restaurants, a Frank Zone, two main highways of access, commercial airports, centers, complete convention center, hospitals, ample road network, wide avenues and many skyscrapers.
Some of its constructions, as the Revitalized Port of Manaus and the famous palafitos (houses constructed on piles) are projected for the seasonal unevennesses of the rivers. The time of rains is of December to May.
The more important cultural events are the Festival of Operates the International, the one of the majors of Latin America and Boi Manaus, a celebration that reunite more than 200 thousand people in a weekend and the Festival of Cinema that I enter the tourist calendar of the State in the 2004. There was a time in which she was the queen of the rubber.
There was more prosperous city, no admired and envied in all the amazonian river basin. Its history begins in 1669, with the foundation of the fort of San jOse gives to Bar do Negro river, to 18 kilometers of the famous “Encounter of waters”, of the rivers Solimoes and Negro, to give rise to the Amazon. Lost in the heat of virgin forest, the small village that settled down later to his around spent two centuries isolated of the rest of the country and the world.
Towards 1890, the operation of the rubber and the concentration of the exports in Manaos made bloom a social and cultural infrastructure without precedents.
The tycoons of the rubber moved fabulous sums of money and were these rich again die those that decided to transform Manaos into a metropolis in the style of those of the Old Continent.
Public works and residences remain today like witnesses of that one time: the Amazon theater and the place San Sebastián, architectonic complex conceived by the Italian Domenico de Angelis; the Customs and the floating wharf, projected and prefabricated in England; the municipal market, to imitation of the one of Them Halls of Paris; the palace Negro River, present soothes of the government of the state and old residence of a German trading eccentric, besides an endless number of places and gardens.
The authentic jewel of Manaos is the Amazon theater, inheritance of the times of rubber splendor. Projected completely in Portugal, it was inaugurated in 1896. In its excessive vanguardista eagerness, the new aristocracy of Manaos did not doubt in contracting the most famous European artists of that one time, like Sara Bernhardt and Enrico Caruso.
Another one of the wonders of Manaos is its floating wharf. Articulated to fluctuate with the changes of level of waters (thirteen meters in some seasons), to his around everything has grown a framework of warehouses, restaurants and stores installed on rafts connected to each other by footbridges that extend by the shores of the Negro river. A singular, gravid picture of reminiscences of the Far East.
At present Manaos is the commercial center par excellence of the amazonian forest. The intensity of its fluvial traffic, that puts to the city in direct sea communications with many of the great ports of the world, demonstrates therefore it.
The inhabitants, next to the million and average one, whom today he has the great capital are the result of a recent and powerful population increase that, in only ten years, from 1970 to 1980, duplicated its population. University city from 1965, Manaos owns an important historical-ethnographic museum and a botanical garden where a great number of endemic species can be contemplated.
In center of Crafts of Manaos products of indigenous manufacture can be acquired: rare baskets, imitation jewelry or musical instruments.
The mixture of the European and local traditions has generated pieces of a particular style, the call caboclo, very rich in colorful. But the authentic attraction for the maniáticos of the purchases constitutes the Frank Zone, where an enormous variety of imported products worldwide free of customs tariffs is sold. From multiple radios and electronic equipment to high jewelry shop, happening through Swiss perfumes, toys, clocks, aromatic grass, Chinese motorcycles, porcelains or rackets of tennis. The supply surpasses all the imaginable possibilities.
In Manaos, the climate is warm and humid, with 27º C of annual average and slight monthly variations. The time of rains is of December to May, whereas the dry sandal of June to November. Each owns its enchantments.
During rains the deep forest is visitable sailing by arms and sewers that in the dry station disappear. When lowering the level of waters appears beaches in the shores and the extensive plains of intermittent flood become passable.