Ah the Amazon! One of my favourite places on earth. I have been exceedingly lucky to be there three times since January of 2024 including our 2024 hosted trip (trip report) and an exploratory trip last summer.
Heading to the Amazon from Calgary takes a bit of doing travel-wise. This trip we had a pretty direct travel plan with one “somewhat” tight connection.
There were 5 of us (Nancy, Anthony, Greg, John (Achilles tendon injury be damned!) and myself) on the January 2025 trip. We all met in Calgary on Wednesday, January 8th for a direct flight to Fort Lauderdale. No issues at YYC. We arrived in Florida at around 5pm with lots of time to catch our 9 pm flight. We had to pick up our luggage for an airline and terminal transfer but had lots of time.
Our next leg took us directly to Brazil on Azul airlines overnight flight to Belem. We then had a one and a half hour layover in Belem before heading to Manaus.
Our challenges started in Belem.
We arrived late because our flight from Florida left just over an hour late. This impacted our ability to clear Brazil customs (which only took 10 min!) Then we had to grab our luggage (which took a LONG time) before the next leg of our trip. Unfortunately more than two dozen passenger bags were left in Florida because the flight was overloaded. (Not cool). And Greg and Anthony’s bags were some of the ones left behind.
After waiting for luggage (some of which didn't arrive) we learned we had missed our connecting flight! The guys completed their lost luggage forms and we all gathered at Azul’s main counter to figure out how they were going to get us to Manaus (I already knew there was a flight leaving at 7:40pm as I had “spidey senses” about the tight connection.) Belem is NOT on the main tourism circuit. Finding someone who spoke English was basically impossible. And we learned that Google translate and Brazilian Portuguese do NOT get along well !
No Azul representative was overly helpful which started to get seriously aggravating even after multiple requests to talk with the manager, granted this was still 6:30 to 7:30am. Luckily the airport had free Wifi.
I had a brain wave to call our outfitter’s (Bucket List) contact in Manaus to have her act as a translator on the phone. Thank god for WhatsApp and the ability to make a phone call on wifi! We got Rosie on the phone and passed it to the one Azul attendant who finally started to take the 5 of us standing their seriously. Needless to say a lot of Portuguese went back and forth that none of us had any comprehension of.
Eventually, we find out we are being sent via Uber to a hotel on behalf of Azul for a rest after the overnight flight. That was a good first step - way better than spending many hours at the airport. But we still had no news about us getting to Manaus!
So I get back on the phone with Rosie and she asked me what the Airline told us they are providing. I explained about the hotel and that there'd been no mention of rebooking our flight. She gets back on with the agent who then has to go to the “back room” to talk with a manager who has finally shown up at about 8:30am. The agent comes back and Rosie is still on the phone speaking on our behalf. (Our tickets were “one way” so after this flight we were no longer using Azul on this trip.) We learned later that Azul was going to do nothing for us and we were going to be stuck in Belem, however Rosie put serious pressure on them and the next thing we know the 5 of us have “Premium” front row seats on the 7:40pm flight to Manaus. Thank you a million times over Rosie.
We are able to check our check luggage before leaving the airport so we didn’t have to cart it around. We left the Belem airport hoping the luggage would show up in Manaus so that our group woul have some of our stuff!
Off to the hotel to spend the day with a late afternoon Uber pickup scheduled to come back to the airport 2 hours in advance. We already had our boarding passes and our luggage was already checked so it was seamless to make the flight.
When we departed Belem we knew the two missing pieces of luggage were still in Fort Laurderdale because Greg had an AirTag that let him know exactly where it was.
“Siri where is my luggage” became a common question over the next couple of days.
Upon arriving in Manaus we were met by Jessica our Bucket List contact for airport transfers. Ultimately we are only about 12 hours late getting to Manaus. Not the worst for sure!
The hotel Millennium in Manaus was great and had simply changed our reservation to arrive later and not charge us for our extra day as if we had arrived at 9am! We had a Manaus tour booked for Friday so we ate at the hotel restaurant, which is very good, and got to bed early in preparation for a day of exploring the Amazon.