Brazil

Brazil - For hundreds of years, Brazil has symbolised the great escape into a primordial, tropical paradise, igniting the Western imagination like no other South American country. From the mad passion of Carnaval to the enormity of the dark Amazon, Brazil is a country of mythic proportions.

Environment - Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country, occupying almost half of the South American continent and bordering every country in it except for Chile and Ecuador. Much of Brazil is scarcely populated, although some regions with previously low population densities, such as the Amazon, are being rapidly settled, logged and depleted.

Brazil can be divided into four major geographic regions. The long, narrow Atlantic seaboard has coastal ranges between the Rio Grande do Sul and Bahia, but is flatter north of Bahia. The large highlands - called the Planalto Brasileiro or central plateau - which extend over most of Brazil's interior south of the Amazon Basin are punctuated by several small mountain ranges and sliced by several large rivers. Two great depressions - the Paraguay Basin, which is characterised by open forest, low woods and scrubland, and the densely forested Amazon Basin - lie in the south-east. The 6275-km-long Amazon is the world's largest river, and the Amazon forest contains 30% of the world's remaining forest.

The richness and diversity of Brazil's fauna is astounding, and the country ranks first in the world for numbers of species of primates, amphibians and plants; third for bird species; and fourth for species of butterflies and reptiles. However, many species are under threat because of the continued depletion of rainforests, desertification in the north-east, poaching in the Pantanal region and coastal pollution.

Most of the country has noticeable seasonal variations in rain, temperature and humidity, but only the south of Brazil has extreme seasonal changes. The Brazilian winter is from June to August, with the coldest southern states receiving average winter temperatures of between 13 and 18 degrees Celsius. In summer (December to February), Rio is hot and humid, with temperatures in the high 30s; the rest of the year, temperatures hover around 25 degrees. The north-east coast gets as hot as Rio but is less humid and stifling. In general, the highlands are less hot and humid, and are prone to summer rainfalls. The Amazon basin is the rainiest part of Brazil, and while it is humid, temperatures average a reasonable 27 degrees.

Culture - Brazilian culture has been shaped not only by the Portuguese, who gave the country its religion and language, but also by the country's native Indians, the considerable African population, and other settlers from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Brazilian music has always been characterised by great diversity and, shaped by musical influences from three continents, it is still developing new and original forms. The samba, which reached the height of popularity during the 1930s, is a mixture of Spanish bolero with the cadences and rhythms of African music. Its most famous exponent was probably Carmen Miranda, known for her fiery temperament and fruity headdresses. The more subdued bossa nova, popular in the 1950s and characterised by performers such as João Gilberto and songs such as 'The Girl from Ipanema', was influenced by North American jazz. Tropicalismo is a mix of musical influences that arrived in Brazil in the 1960s, including Italian ballads. More recently, the lambada, influenced by Caribbean rhythms, has become internationally popular.

Amongst Brazil's writers of fiction, Machado de Assis stands out with his terse, ironic style. The son of a freed slave, Assis worked as a typesetter and journalist in 19th-century Rio. Brazil's most famous 20th-century writer is the regionalist Jorge Amado, whose tales are colourful romances of Bahia's people and places.

Brazil is officially a Catholic country, but in practice the country's religious life incorporates Indian animism, African cults, Afro-Catholic syncretism and Kardecism, a spiritualist religion embracing Eastern mysticism, which is gaining popularity with Brazilian Whites.

Portuguese, infused with many words from Indian and African languages, is spoken by all Brazilians. Accents, dialects and slang vary regionally.

The staples of the Brazilian diet are white rice, black beans and manioc flour, usually combined with steak, chicken or fish. Brazilian specialities include moqueca, a seafood stew flavoured with dendê oil and coconut milk; caruru, okra and other vegetables mixed with shrimp, onions and peppers; and feijoada, a bean and meat stew. On many street corners in Bahia, women wearing flowing white dresses sell acarje, beans, mashed in salt and onions and then fried in dendê oil. The fried balls are filled with seafood, manioc paste, dried shrimp, pepper and tomato sauce.

Events - Brazil's most famous festival is Carnaval, beginning at midnight on the Friday before Ash Wednesday (18 February in 1996) and lasting for five days. It is celebrated all over Brazil and there are more authentic versions than the glitzy tourist drawcard held in Rio, but it's a fantastic spectacle nonetheless. In the sambodromo, a tiered street designed for samba parades, the Brazilians harness sweat, noise and mayhem as the 16 top samba schoools each have their hour of glory.

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The Amazon - is a gigantic system of rivers and forests, covering half of Brazil and extending into neighbouring countries. The stretch of river known as Rio Amazonas runs between the cities of Manaus and Belém, though the various rivers which join to form it provide a navigable route for ocean-going vessels to the other side of the South American continent.

The forest still keeps many of its secrets: to this day major tributaries of the Amazon are unexplored. Of the estimated 15,000 species of Amazon creatures, thousands of birds and fish and hundreds of mammals have not been classified. A cursory sampling of known animal species found in the forest - some common, some rare, some virtually extinct - includes jaguar, tapir, peccary, spider monkey, sloth, armadillo, caiman, alligator, river dolphin, boa constrictor and anaconda. Forest birds include toucans, parrots, macaws, hummingbirds and hawks; insect life is well represented with over 1800 species of butterflies and more than 200 species of mosquitoes; and fish such as piranha, tucunare, piraracu, pintado and electric eel abound in such an amazing diversity of fish species that biologists are unable to identify 30% of the catch found in Belem's markets.

The most common jumping-off point for excursions into the Amazon is Manaus, which lies beside the Rio Negro, 10 km upstream from the confluence of the Solimões and Negro rivers, which join to form the Amazon. Although Manaus continues to be vaunted in countless glossy travel brochures as an Amazon wonderland, the city itself has few attractions and is dirty, ugly and increasingly crime-ridden. The city's most potent symbol is the Teatro Amazonas, the famous opera house designed by Domenico de Angelis in Italian Renaissance style at the height of the rubber boom, in 1896.

Day trips and boat tours up the Amazon provide a close-up experience of the jungle flora and abundant bird life, and a chance to see what life is like for the cabolcos (inhabitants of the Amazonian river towns) in the vicinity of Manaus, but don't expect to meet remote Indian tribes or dozens of free-ranging beasts, because in both cases contact has been synonymous with destruction, and both have sensibly fled from accessible areas.

The Pantanal - The Amazon may have all the fame and glory, but the Pantanal is a far better place to see wildlife. This vast area of wetlands, about half the size of France, lies in the far west of Brazil and extends into the border regions of Bolivia and Paraguay. Birds are the most frequently seen wildlife, but the Pantanal is also a sanctuary for giant river otters, anacondas, iguanas, jaguars, cougars, crocodiles, deer and anteaters. The area has few people and no towns, and access is via the Transpantaneira road which ends at the one-hotel hamlet of Porto Jofre. Boat tours are available from the port city of Rio Paraguai on the Bolivian border, but be cautious as the town has a reputation for gun-running, drug traffic and poaching.

Salvador da Bahia - Bahia is Brazil's most Africanised state. Its capital, Salvador da Bahia (often abbreviated to Bahia or Salvador), is a fascinating city loaded with historic buildings. If beaches are what you want, the only difficulty is making a choice. Founded in 1549, Salvador was Brazil's most important city for 300 years, and the Portuguese Empire's second city, after Lisbon. As the centre of the sugar trade, it was famous for gold-filled churches and beautiful mansions, and for its many wild festivals and general sensuality and decadence. Carnival in Salvador is justly famous and attracts hordes of tourists. Other highlights include 34 colonial churches; the Museu Afro-Brasileira, which is dedicated to Black culture; and the Elevador Lacerda, an Art Deco structure with clanking electric elevators which truck up and down a set of 85-metre cement shafts in less than 15 seconds and carry over 50,000 passengers daily between the port and the hilly historic section of the city.

Iguacu Falls - The Rio Iguacu arises in the coastal mountains of Parana and Santa Catarina, the Serra do Mar, and snakes west for 600 km before it widens majestically and sweeps around a magnificent jungle stage, plunging and crashing in tiered falls at the border with Argentina and Paraguay. The 275 falls are over three km wide and 80 metres high. The best time of year to see them is from August to November, when there is least risk of flood waters hindering the approach to the catwalks.

Activities - There are great spots for hang-gliding in Rio, especially around Pedra Bonita, near Pepino beach. Surfing is popular all along the coast. Waves are especially good in the southern state of Santa Caterina, but there is also plenty of surf close to Rio. Sailing is big in Buzios and off the larger resorts along the coast. Inland, the Rio Araguaia in Goiás and Tocantins is known as a fishing paradise. There are excellent opportunities for rock climbing in and near Rio and in the national and state parks, and hiking is great along the coast. Futebol (soccer) is the national obsession and if you can play the game or talk about it meaningfully, you'll become an instant hit.

Getting There & Away - There are frequent flights to Rio from all major cities in South America. Other gateway airports in Brazil include Recife, popular with German package tourists, and Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, which is halfway between Rio and Miami. Varig, Brazil's national airline, flies to many major cities in the world. Brazil has land borders with every other country in South America, with the exceptions of Ecuador and Chile, so while some travellers may bus in from Uruguay in the south, others arrive via the trem da morte (death train) from Bolivia. By river, many travellers take a slow boat down the Amazon from Iquitos in Peru or into the Pantanal via the Rio Paraguay from Asuncion.

Getting Around - Flights within Brazil are not cheap, but with the huge distances involved, the occasional splurge may be an absolute necessity. Except in the Amazon basin, buses are the primary form of long-distance transportation for the vast majority of Brazilians, and services are generally excellent and cheap. All major cities are linked by frequent buses; for example, there's at least one every 15 minutes between Rio and Sao Paulo during peak hours. There are very few railway passenger services in Brazil, despite the fact that there is over 30,000 km of track; however, enthusiasts should not despair as there are still some wonderful railway journeys in Brazil, including some by steam train. Although river travel in Brazil has decreased due to the construction of a comprehensive road network, it is still possible to travel by boat between some of the cities of the Rio Sao Francisco.