FACTS ABOUT PARINTINS: Parintins is located in the Amazon jungle, at the edge of the Amazon River, about 300km by air and about 420km by boat from Manaus City. The town was founded in 1793 and has today about 90 thousand habitants.

HOW IS PARINTINS: It is normally a calm city located in the Amazon jungle, at the edge of the Amazon River, except during the last week of June. Parintins is famous of its main attraction, the folkloric show “Bumba meu Boi”, which attracts in tens of thousands tourists and change the normal picture of the city. It is a kind of Carnival that happens every year, the last weekend in June. This spectacle lasts for 3 days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday night) and every night there is a colorful (blue & red) show with lots of adornments, music and dance. The event is inside a special designed stadium, which has a format of a bull head. The demand is very high for this festivity and there are limited to 35 thousand spectators, watching about 10 thousand of participants that present this show.

There are just a few hotels and guest houses in the town and as the place almost double the number of habitants during this event, it comes quite chaotic. There are much more people than the town can support so the hotels are full booked long time before the event and the prices burst all limits, the place comes unreasonable expensive. An option is to joy a chartered cruiser from Manaus, which serves as means of transport and accommodation at the same time.

WHEN TO GO / CLIMATE: It is possible to visit Parintins during the entire year, but for those that like festivities and have save a lots of money, may experience and visit the “Bumba meu Boi” festival during the last weekend in June. The climate is defined at tropical humid with an average temperature varying between 24ºC and 31ºC during the year. Locally they call the period from December to May for winter as it is the rain period with lower temperature, but still warm and humid. From June to November is considered as summer, with very hot (can reach temperatures of 40ºC in the sun), sunny and less rainy weather. During this summer and “dry season” the water level decrease and it appears some river beaches that people enjoy during summer.

HOW TO GO: The access can be by air or by boat. By Air: there are daily flights departing from Manaus that take approximately 1:15h. By Water: Boats leave from Manaus, Belém and Santarém, and the trip can be made using simple regional boats, or fast luxurious catamarans. These can be regularly scheduled or chartered. In regional boat, on regular basis, it takes about 18 hours going down the river from Manaus and 24 hours going up river, and from Parintins to Belem it may take 60 hours to go. In the faster river boats, it may take about 8hours to go from Manaus.

TIPS: Buying a “seat” in a regional cruiser boat, one can choose to stay at the 2nd class (more noisy close to the engine), the 1st class (more quite upper floor) or in a “camarote” (a private cabin for two). The travelers have to bring their own hammock (not included in the price) and in the cabin there are two beds with clothes (no private bathroom). It is also possible to charter private yachts and cruiser ships of different standards, all depending on the requester’s desires and travel budget. NOTE: During special events in Parintins, the regional cruisers are often overbooked (more passengers than allowed on board), suffer delays and have higher rates of stealing & other criminal actions, whereof Packtours doesn’t recommend travels by these regular cruisers.

EVENTS:
Parintins Folklore Festival (June)
The last week of June, with the peak of the festival taking place in the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday night) with the presentations of the two bulls, Guaranteed and Capricious. The hotels in Parintins come full booked very fast some months before the festival period. Therefore the boats that transport people to the city at this time also serve as lodging for the visitors.

ATTRACTIONS:
Uaiacurapá River
Beautiful fluvial beaches with white sands and dark water surge between the months of August and February, during the low water season. The do Pacoval, das Onças and das Guaribas islands are near the river.

Parintins Mountains
This 152 m high area is surrounded by thick vegetation and forms the border with the state of Pará. It is also called Valéria Mountain and it has a special attraction: the branch of the river that forms the beautiful Valéria Lake.

Macuricanä Lake
This beautiful lake can only be appreciated during the Amazon summer. It is part of a lacustrine complex that includes approximately 40 lakes.

MORE ABOUT THE FOLKLORIC FESTIVAL:

At the end of the 19th Century, the region received migrants from the northeast in search of the riches generated in the Amazon from rubber extraction. They brought with them one of their strongest cultural traditions, the northeast’s bumba-meu-boi.

Guaranteed or Capricious? Heart or star? Red or blue? That’s how it is in Parintins: you have to choose which side to take. The historical rivalry between the two bulls called Guaranteed and Capricious dominates the city, permeates people’s imagination and culminates. In the bumbódromo (festival arena), the Bulls put on a grandiose spectacle of dance, music, drama and special effects – a true rural opera that drives its 35 thousand daily spectators into a frenzy.

There it found another bull, a truly Amazon bull, and it became the boi-bumbá of Parintins. Until the 1960s, the Bulls were always staged in the houses and backyards of Parintins; every once in a while, they would meet in the streets, and the sometimes violent confrontation was inevitable. The fun was organized, grew, evolved and became a true spectacle. The Bulls incorporated characters, rituals and legends that go back to the inhabitants of the Amazon forest, the Indians, the rural settlers, and the ecological and social issues that afflict them. Ever since 1988, they have been holding the spectacle at the bumbódromo, a stadium built just to receive the festival.

The Bulls, (teams) with approximately 2.5 thousand participants, occupy the arena for 2h30 each. Guaranteed is the white bull with a red heart on its forehead. Capricious is black, and it bears a blue star on its forehead. Tribes of dancers accompany them and form a carpet of color in movement. The gigantic floats that move about and articulate, creating a scenario for the presentation of the most important figures: the elegant cunhã-poranga, the folklore queen, the standard-bearer, the young miss of the farm, and the powerful witch doctor. Everything is explained in detail by the narrators and moves to the contagious sound of the songs sung by the tune “leaders” and the beat of more than 250 drums. On separate sides of the stadium, the two tireless, super-motivated cheering groups, the galeras, also participate in the spectacle. When their Bull is performing in the arena, one half of the bumbódromo actually shakes, while the “enemy” fans remain in the most respectful silence.