Brazil: Rio, Iguazú & the Amazon
Brazil in the southern winter. The city from the water, the great falls from the air and a river vessel on the Rio Negro.
Brazil's best window for this route is the southern winter. From May to October Rio is drier and comfortable, the Amazon is in its lower-water season and easier to move on, and the light over Iguazú is clean. The rains that define the Brazilian summer have eased, and the heat with them.
Fourteen nights, four very different Brazils. Rio de Janeiro to begin, then the falls at Iguazú, then the Amazon by river, and a stretch of coast, Trancoso in Bahia, to end on the sand. It is a big country and this is a considered line through it rather than an attempt at all of it.
Rio is the set piece, Sugarloaf, Christ the Redeemer before the coaches arrive, the beaches, and the bay from a private boat, which is the way to see the city. Iguazú deserves both sides, the Brazilian panorama and the Argentine Devil's Throat, and a helicopter over the whole system. The Amazon, out of Manaus and up the Rio Negro, is the meeting of the waters, the flooded forest and the caiman after dark. Trancoso is the decompression, a square, a beach and nothing to do.
The aviation is straightforward for a country this size. Rio, Foz do Iguaçu, Manaus and the Bahia coast all take jets, and the legs are long enough that private lift earns its place. In the Amazon the river vessel becomes the base once you leave Manaus.
Among our preferred hotel partners we use Belmond Copacabana Palace in Rio and Belmond Hotel das Cataratas, the only hotel inside the Brazilian falls park, at Iguazú; on the river we charter a vessel on the Rio Negro, and at Trancoso we use Uxua Casa.
Ask your advisor about Christ the Redeemer before the coaches, a helicopter over Iguazú, and the Pantanal in place of the Amazon if wild jaguar matter more than the river.