Manaus - Brazil

You could call Manaus the anti-Rome. No roads lead to this Amazonian capital, unless you happen to be coming into Brazil from southern Venezuela. The only impressive buildings were built practically in a day, during the short-lived rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And pizza? Sure, they have it, but topped with tropical fruits like tucumã or cupuaçu and served with packets of mayonnaise.

A city of about a million and a half, perched on the Rio Negro some six miles upstream from where it joins the Amazon, Manaus is not so much a tourist destination as a way station for adventurers who fly in for rain forest treks or pass through on a boat trip downriver to Belém.

While much of it is grimy and virtually shuts down on Sunday, Manaus is a fascinating port city, buzzing with activity six days a week. Flat-screen TV's may be manufactured in a free trade zone nearby and fleets of modern taxis may arrive by boat, but the lack of a road to Bahia or Brasília or São Paulo still gives Manaus a quirky sense of bustling isolation. People here often have striking indigenous faces rather than the blond to bronze to black spectrum of many Brazilian cities.

And there is plenty to do, especially with your taste buds. Visitors can feast on the often-surprising cuisine from Amazônia (a region of nine states, including Amazonas, of which Manaus is the capital), from fresh fish with tongue twister names, to fruits so exotic they make guava seem humdrum.

Between meals, and especially before breakfast, the teeming downtown port and markets buzz with activity, equally fascinating for microeconomics professors and lovers of cheap pineapples. And in April or May, visitors can end the day with opera. Really.

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