Places in Brazil
There are dozens of "must-see" places in Brazil, so deciding where to go can be tricky. Below is a breakdown of places of interest by region.
Places in Brazil: The southeast
The highlight of the southeast, and one of the most popular places in Brazil, is
.
No city on earth has a setting to compare: rainforest-covered mountains
rise sheer from a bottle-green ocean and a vast wine-glass bay. And Rio
clusters and claws at them; its centre climbing over smaller hills and
crowding behind crescent gentle coves; its slums clinging to their
smooth granite sides. The beaches and music are wonderful, and carnival
- which takes place in a stadium, and not in the streets - is one of
the world's great spectacles. Rio's ugly and far less courted big
sister,
, lies a
few hours' bus ride away. Its interminable labyrinths of concrete are
unprepossessing at first, but those who find their way into the maze,
preferably with a local guide, discover the best nightlife,
restaurants, high-end shopping and popular culture in South America.
The land-locked state of Minas Gerais is Brazil's literary heartland.
Its pastoral landscapes are broken by rocky mountains and dotted with
tranquil colonial towns like
Diamantina
,
and
.
Minas is infused with a nostalgic lyricism, which inspired Brazil's
greatest writer (João Guimarães Rosa), its greatest poet, (Carlos
Drummond de Andrade), musician, (Milton Nascimento) and footballer
(Edson Arantes do Nascimento or Pele).
Places in Brazil: Bahia and the northeast
Northeastern
Brazil is famous for its beaches and colonial cities. The most popular place to visit, Bahia, offers the best of both with a string of
palm-shaded silvery strands lining its coast and islands, and the
largest colonial city in the Americas,
Salvador
. Bahia is the home of capoeira and African Brazilian
candomblé
religion, and Salvador's street carnival is Brazil's most raucous. The
state's arid backlands are broken by dramatic, waterfall-covered
mountains in the
Chapada Diamantina
.
Recife
, capital of Pernambuco, and its twin city
Olinda
,
are almost as pretty as Salvador and have an even livelier cultural
scene, with some of the most exciting contemporary Brazilian music and
the country's largest street carnival. Travelling to the north coast,
there are hundreds of beaches to choose from, some highly developed,
others less so. You can swim, surf or ride the dunes in buggies in
Jericoacoara
or
, or kitesurf in the neo-colonial settlement of
Cumbuco
. Then there are the vast dune deserts of the
Lençóis Maranhenses
on the windswept Maranhão coast and the last major city before the mouth of the Amazon,
, whose centre is covered in colonial tiles, and whose streets reverberate with some of Brazil's best nightlife.
Places in Brazil: The centre west
The centre west of Brazil is dominated by the expansive grasslands, table-top mountains and scrub forests of the
cerrado
and the Pantanal wetlands. The cerrado
comprises South America's most acutely threatened biome, almost as rich
in unique flora and fauna as the Amazon and, in the wilds of the Chapada dos Veadeiros
or Jalapão
, just as magnificent. The rivers, lakes and grasslands of the Pantanal
are the best place to see wildlife in the Americas; at the end of the
dry season, there are few places on earth where birds can be seen in
such astonishing numbers. At the eastern end of the centre west is the
country's capital and one of the most impressive places in Brazil, Brasília
. Carved from the cerrado
in the 1960s, Brasília is now a World Heritage Site for its repository of striking modernist architecture. Places in Brazil: Northern Brazil
The north of the country is dominated by the
Amazon
,
its forest and its tributaries that spread as wide and thin as the
blood vessels in a human body. The first Europeans cut their way into
the interior of South America in search of an inland sea and an empire
rich with gold. And when the river is in full flood its tributaries
link through the inundated forest to form what seems like an oceanic
labyrinth of
lakes. These are served by sea-going cargo boats that call in at river
ports along its length. Some ports are little places while others, like
Belém
, with its cutting-edge alternative music scene, and
Manaus
,
with myriad forest lodges, are home to more than a million people.
North of Manaus is the overland route through Boa Vista to Venezuela.
The forest stretches north into Colombia at
São Gabriel
and
Tabatinga
, and into Venezuela and the Guianas near
Boa Vista
, and south to the central tablelands of
Mato Grosso
.
Places in Brazil: Southern Brazil
With its maté-sipping
gaúchos
,
beer festivals, squeeze-box tango and blonde-haired, blue-eyed super
models, the three states of southern Brazil feel closer to Uruguay, or
even Germany, than they do to the rest of Brazil. Most visitors come
for the world's most famous waterfalls,
Serra Gaúcha
mountains in Rio Grande do Sul and the
Serra Graciosa
in Paraná, and beautiful beaches around the laid-back city of
Florianópolis
in Santa Catarina and the tranquil sub-tropical island of
Ilha do Mel
. There's also the world's second-largest beer festival - in the German- Brazilian enclave of
, every October.
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This is edited copy from Footprint Handbooks. For comprehensive details (incl address, tel no, directions, opening times and prices) please refer to book or individual chapter PDF
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