Basic hours for most stores and businesses are from 9am to 6pm, with an extended lunch hour from around noon to 2pm. Banks don't open until 10am, stay open all day, but usually stop changing money at either 2pm or 3pm; except for those at major airports, they're closed at weekends and on public holidays. Museums and monuments more or less follow office hours but many are closed on Monday.
Although plane and bus timetables are kept to whenever possible, in the less developed parts of the country - most notably Amazonia but also the interior of the Northeast - delays often happen. Brazilians are very Latin in their attitude to time, and if ever there was a country where patience will stand you in good stead it's Brazil. Turn up at the arranged time, but don't be surprised at all if you're kept waiting. Waiting times are especially long if you have to deal with any part of the state bureaucracy, like extending a visa. There is no way out of this; just take a good book.
Brazilian public holidaysThere are plenty of local and state holidays, but on the following national holidays just about everything in the country will be closed:
January 1
Carnaval - the five days leading up to Ash Wednesday
Good Friday
April 21 - Remembrance of Tiradentes
May 1 - Labour Day
Corpus Christi
September 7 - Independence Day
October 12 - Nossa Senhora Aparecida
November 2 - Dia dos Finados (the Day of the Dead)
November 15 - Proclamation of the Republic
December 2
