Postal services within Brazil are cheap, though sending airmail abroad is expensive. The phone network, too, is impressive, especially considering the size of the country: public phones are everywhere, most places can be dialled direct and rates are low. Brazil is fast hooking up to the Internet, and you'll come across cybercafés and Internet cabins in the most unlikely of small towns
Post offices and letters
A post office is called a correio : they have bright yellow postboxes and signs. An imposing Correios e Telégrafos building will always be found in the centre of a city of any size, and from here you can send telegrams as well; but there are also small offices and kiosks scattered around which only deal with mail. Because post offices in Brazil deal with other things besides post, queues are often a problem. Save time by using a franking machine for stamps; the lines move much more quickly. Stamps ( selos) are most commonly simply available in two varieties - either for mailing within Brazil or abroad. A foreign postage stamp costs around 60¢ for either a postcard or a letter up to 10 grammes. It is very expensive to send parcels abroad - if you plan to cross into Paraguay consider sending packages from there, as it has much lower postal rates.
Mail within Brazil takes three or four days, longer in the North and Northeast, while airmail letters to Europe and North America usually take about a week or sometimes even less. Surface mail takes about a month to North America, and three to Europe. Although the postal system is generally very reliable, it is not advisable to send valuables through the mail.
Telephones
Public telephones are called orelhões, "big ears", after their distinctive conch-shaped covers. They come in two varieties: red for local calls and blue for inter-urban. These days, phones are operated mostly by phonecards ( carta telefônico) which have replaced tokens ( fichas) and are on sale everywhere - from newspaper stands, street sellers' trays and most cafés. For local calls a 5 reis card will last for several conversations; for long-distance or international calls, higher-value phonecards come in 10, 20, 50 or 100 reis denominations. Calls to the USA or Europe cost about $2.50 per minute. Lift the phone from the hook, insert the phonecard and listen for a dialling tone before dialling direct. Note that long-distance calls are cheaper after 8pm.
The dialling tone is a single continuous note, engaged is rapid pips, and the ringing tone is regular peals, as in the USA. The phone system in Brazil is continually overloaded. If you get an engaged tone, keep trying - nine times out of ten, the phone is not actually engaged and you get through after seven or eight attempts. The smaller the place, the more often you need to try: be patient.
Long-distance and international calls can also be made from a posto telefônico , which all operate in the same way: you ask at the counter for a chave and are given a numbered key. You go to the booth, insert the key and turn it to the right, and can then make up to three completed calls. You are billed when you return the key - around $2.50 a minute to the USA or Europe. To make an inter-urban call you need to dial the trunk code, the código DDD (pronounced "daydayday"), listed at the front of phone directories. For international calls, ask for chamada internacional; a reverse-charge call is a chamada a cobrar. Reversing the charges costs about twice as much as paying locally, and it is much cheaper to use a telephone charge card from home. Except in the most remote parts of Amazonia and the Northeast, everything from a small town upwards has a posto, though note that outside large cities they shut at 10pm.
Email and the Internet
Like most rapidly developing nations, Brazil has latched on to the Internet, with many hotels and businesses now online. Public access is not so widely available, although all cities and many towns do now have cybercafés (listed in the "Listings" sections throughout the guide, and many hotels offer Internet access too. There's a surprising paucity of access in the Amazon region and parts of the Northeast, although both Manaus and Belém are well served by Internet facilities, as is Salvador. The general hourly rate for Internet access in Brazil is between $2 and $4.
