Where is the Amazon rainforest? A map of its countries and gateways

The Amazon rainforest lies in the north of South America, around the great river that gives it its name. The Government of Brazil ranks the Amazon as the planet's biggest biome, about 4.2 million km2 in all, shared by nine countries.¹ They are Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. Most visitors meet it in Brazil or Peru, but the forest does not care about borders.

The drainage basin is bigger still. The Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization says the basin spans more than 6.1 million km2, covering 44% of South America's land area, and holds more than half of the tropical forest.^6,7 FAO calls the region's forest the largest continuous tropical forest in the world.⁸ Those are different ways of measuring, so the figures should not be added together.

For a reader planning a trip, the useful picture is simple. Draw a line from the Andes in the west to the Atlantic coast of Brazil in the east, and the river and its rainforest fill the space in between. Manaus sits near the middle of that line, at the point where big rivers become the Amazon, which makes it a convenient city from which to see the real forest rather than a photograph of it.

Yes, and not just on the edge of it. The Manaus city government describes the city as located in the world's largest tropical forest, surrounded by its rivers.¹⁶ In NASA's description Manaus is Amazonas state's capital and biggest city, the main transport hub of the upper Amazon, home to two million people.^3,17 That matters for planning, because a day of rainforest does not require a flight to a remote camp: the jungle edge is a boat ride from a city with hotels, restaurants and a river port.

The geography explains the position. According to NASA, the Amazon proper begins at Manaus, where the Solimões, which is the upper Amazon, meets the Negro in central Amazonas.⁴ In other words, the city sits where the river gets its famous name. The two rivers share a channel for several kilometers east of the city without blending, a sight that day tours from Manaus are built around.¹⁸ For a traveler it is a handy fact to carry on the boat, since the guide's explanation of the colors starts from exactly this point.

A city of that size is not a jungle camp, and it is better not to expect one. Manaus has an airport, an opera house and a market, and the untouched forest begins outside it. What the city gives you is access: a river port, hotel pickups and boats that reach forest, lake and archipelago within a day, with comfortable beds, hot showers and air-conditioned rooms to come back to afterwards.

A wild place near the city is the Anavilhanas archipelago in the Rio Negro, which is worth a day even if you have seen other forest. INPA ranks it among the world's biggest river archipelagos, with more than 400 islands that come and go with the river, and says the water level moves by as much as 10 meters between ebb and flood.^20,49 Because black water bathes the islands, they carry igapó forest, with soggy and very acid soil.⁵⁰

NASA notes that the Rio Negro has two long archipelagoes upstream of Manaus, which is why boat tours north and west of the city show such different scenery from the muddy Solimões.²¹ Within the city limits, MUSA takes up 100 hectares of the Adolpho Ducke forest reserve and has a 42-meter observation tower above the canopy.^40,39 The museum is the easy option for travelers with only a few hours, since it combines forest trails and a pond of giant water lilies inside the city limits.⁵¹

ACTO's figures hint at the climate: yearly rainfall of 200 mm in the Andes rises past 6,000 mm in places on the plains, and about 3,000 species of fish live in the basin.^47,52 You do not need to memorize those numbers to travel well. They explain why packing a raincoat is sensible, and why the water level, and so the choice of tour, changes through the year. In practice the forest's wetness is a daily fact, so a light rain jacket matters more than almost anything else in the bag.

The rainforest is not static. According to NASA, the rivers around Manaus are at their widest from May to July, the high-water months, with the rise running to several meters, and they sit near low water in September.⁴⁶ Operators feel the swing too: dry-season trips can lose a few activities and stops, as one listing warns, so the calendar shapes what a day on the water looks like.

The swing can be extreme. At Manaus port the gauge has read as low as 13.63 meters in 2010 and as high as 29.77 meters at the record flood, with 15.14 meters in October 2023.^54,24,55 Neither extreme is typical, and both are reminders that planners of lodges and boat routes treat the water level as the main variable of the year. A visitor who sees the forest in the flood sees treetops from a canoe, and a visitor in the dry season walks on sand where the canoe went.

For a first trip, either season works, because the structure of the day stays the same: a boat, a lake, a village and a meal. If you have a choice, ask your operator how the current water level changes the stops, and plan the trek-heavy trips for lower water and the canoe-heavy ones for high water. That one question does more for your day than any season chart. Treat the answer as the real itinerary: it decides which channels the canoe enters, which trails are dry and how long the walk from the landing is.