Brazil eSIM

Mostly, yes. Rio de Janeiro to Salvador is about 1,650 kilometres: two hours and ten minutes flying, against more than twenty hours of driving. Rio to Foz do Iguaçu is roughly 1,100 kilometres and about two hours in the air; Rio to Brasília some 1,150 kilometres, an hour and forty flying or fourteen hours by road. The exception is the Rio–São Paulo corridor at around 430 kilometres, where frequent buses take about six hours.

Plan on separate bases rather than day trips. Rio wants three or four days on its own — Corcovado, Sugarloaf, the beaches and Santa Teresa do not compress well. Foz do Iguaçu is a two-hour flight from Rio and repays two days if you want both sides of the falls as well as Itaipu or the bird park. An Amazon lodge out of Manaus is a multi-night commitment with a flight at each end. Two weeks makes the combination comfortable; ten days makes it a rush.

Carnival falls in February or March and the dates move each year, so look them up before booking: it is the busiest and most expensive stretch on the calendar, which is either the reason to come or the reason to stay away. Seasons are inverted here. December to March is the hot half in Rio, São Paulo and Salvador, in the thirties with short heavy showers; June to August is cooler, roughly 20 to 25°C in Rio. September to November and March to May are the easier months.

The default is the beach strip. Copacabana and Ipanema put you on the sand with Leblon beyond, and Santos Dumont, the airport that takes most domestic flights, is only about two kilometres from downtown. Santa Teresa is the alternative — a hillside neighbourhood above the centre, quieter and further from the water, with the climb up and down as the trade-off. Galeão, where international flights land, is about 20 kilometres from Copacabana, forty to fifty minutes by road.

They are different views, and the town of Foz do Iguaçu is the base for both. The Brazilian side gives the panoramic walkway, the falls seen whole rather than close up. The Argentine side puts you on catwalks over the water, close up. Doing both means crossing an international border, and that is the part with a consequence for a phone: do not assume a plan bought for Brazil continues on the Argentine side. Read the offer's own territory list first.

It is worth it if you accept what it costs in time and in signal. The basin is reached by river boat and small aircraft, and deep-jungle lodges sit far from any cell infrastructure, so those days are effectively offline whatever you are carrying. Manaus itself is hot and humid all year, around 27 to 32°C, and rainiest from December to May. Save the return flight details, the lodge directions and anything you need to read before you leave the city.

It is reached by air through Recife or Natal, and it is a protected marine park: visitor numbers are capped and an environmental fee applies, so the leg has to be booked rather than improvised. What it gives back is clear water around a remote Atlantic archipelago. Treat it as its own stretch of days instead of an add-on to a Rio week, and settle the fee and the bookings before you fly out — an island that far offshore is a poor place to be sorting paperwork.