The Rough Guide to Brazil (Travel Guide eBook)

Rough Guides

Description

Discover this vast and varied South American country with the most incisive and entertaining guidebook on the market. Whether you plan to hit the beaches of Rio, take a boat up the Amazon or explore the gorgeous colonial towns of Minas Gerais, The Rough Guide to Brazil will show you the ideal places to sleep, eat, drink, shop and visit along the way.
-Independent, trusted reviews written with Rough Guides' trademark blend of humour, honesty and insight, to help you get the most out of your visit, with options to suit every budget.
-Full-colour chapter maps throughout - to explore Rio's beach neighbourhoods and remote Amazon towns without needing to get online.
-Stunning images - a rich collection of inspiring colour photography.
Things not to miss - Rough Guides' rundown of the best sights and experiences in Brazil. Itineraries - carefully planned routes to help you organise your trip. Detailed coverage - this travel guide has in-depth practical advice for every step of the way.
Areas covered include: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo, Bahia, the Northeast, the Amazon, Brasilia, the Pantanal and the South, covering Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. Attractions include: Rio's Corcovado, Iguacu Falls, Salvador's old town, Rio Amazon as boat trips and the Ilha do Mel.
Basics - essential pre-departure practical information including getting there, local transport, accommodation, food and drink, festivals and events,sports and outdoor activities and more
Background information - a Contexts chapter devoted to history, the environment, music, cinema, football and recommended books, as well as a guide to Brazilian Portuguese.
Make the most of your time on Earth with The Rough Guide to Brazil.
About Rough Guides: Escape the every day with Rough Guides. We are a leading travel publisher known for our "tell it like it is" attitude, up-to-date content and great writing. Since 1982, we've published books covering more than 120 destinations around the globe, with an ever-growing series of ebooks, a range of beautiful, inspirational reference titles, and an award-winning website. We pride ourselves on our accurate, honest and informed travel guides.

Sujets

• Travel
• South America
• Latin America
• Brazil

Informations

• Publié par: Apa Publications
• Date de parution: 02 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789194883
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 26 Mo

Extrait

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IGUAÇU FALLS
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Where to go
When to go
Author picks
Things not to miss
Itineraries
BASICS
Getting there
Getting around
Accommodation
Food and drink
Health
The media
Festivals and public holidays
Sports and outdoor activities
Travelling with children
Travel essentials
THE GUIDE
1 Rio de Janeiro
2 Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo
3 Bahia
4 The Northeast
5 The Amazon
6 Brasília and the Planalto Central
7 Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul
8 São Paulo
9 The South
CONTEXTS
History
The Amazon: a guide to the issues
Music
Cinema
Books
Football
Language
Glossary
SMALL PRINT AND INDEX
Introduction to
Brazil
The mighty rivers of the Amazon, the pulsing Carnaval rhythms, bone-white beaches and footballing flair: almost everyone on the planet knows something about Brazil. Yet South America’s biggest country still holds plenty of surprises. Though Rio de Janeiro draws by far the most tourists – indeed, for many visitors Rio is Brazil – this is a land of stunningly diverse and staggeringly beautiful landscapes, with a kaleidoscope of culture to match. In one, vast nation this up-and-coming superpower encompasses the dry, mythic landscapes of the northeastern sertão; the wildlife-rich plains of the Pantanal; the gorgeous colonial hill towns of Minas Gerais; churning São Paulo’s urban chic; the watery labyrinth of Amazonia; and seemingly endless, mesmerizing tropical beaches all along the South Atlantic coast.
The sheer size of the country prevents any sort of overarching statement about the typical Brazilian experience, just as the diversity of its people undercuts any notion of the typical Brazilian. Indeed, Brazil often seems isolated in its own vastness, a world apart with apparently little connection to or interest in its seven Spanish-speaking neighbours. Cut off by language ( Portuguese ), culture and especially race, Brazil is proud of its diversity, from its native indigenous population and early Portuguese conquerors, to later waves of Italians, Germans, Spanish, Ukrainians, Polish, Arabs and Japanese migrants. In stark contrast to its neighbours it also has a relatively large African population – a legacy of slavery, which was legal here right up until 1888. As a result, Brazil is home to the most varied and dynamic artistic movements on the continent, with Carnaval the biggest party season anywhere and a bewildering range of musical styles, festivals and celebrations in evidence all year round.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that most Brazilians now live in cities (seventeen of them contain over one million people), with seventy percent of the population crammed along the coastal strip; São Paulo alone boasts over twelve million inhabitants. Though vast regions of Brazil are empty or sparsely populated farmland, agriculture only represents a fraction of total GDP today and the nation is primarily an urban, developed society. As a result, though it is still possible to travel on a budget here, prices are much higher than in any other South American country.
Yet even on the shortest visit, Brazil’s problems are glaringly obvious. The economy went through a devastating recession between 2014 and 2017, and the divide between rich and poor remains a contentious issue, with a mind-bending disparity of wealth – the grinding poverty of the favela (the generic name for slums present in every city), ongoing drug wars and high crime rates can be depressing.
While many Brazilians were proud of the nation’s role (if not their team’s performance) as football World Cup (2014) and Olympic (2016) host, billions were spent on new stadiums while millions of Brazilians still struggle to pay rent and find enough to eat each day – the exposure of a massive government bribery scandal helped spark the latest economic downturn. It’s a challenging but fascinating time for Brazil, and a privilege to witness what’s happening first hand. There are few places where strangers can feel so confident of a warm welcome – and a really good party.

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BOYS PLAYING FOOTBALL, FAVELA MORRO DA MINEIRA IN RIO DE JANEIRO
< Back to Introduction to Brazil
Where to go
The most heavily populated part of Brazil is the Southeast, where the three largest cities – São Paulo , Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte – form a triangle around which the economy pivots. All are worth visiting, but Rio, which really is as beautiful as it seems in pictures, is an essential stop, while the ravishing colonial relic of Paraty lies between here and booming São Paulo. North of here, the city of Belo Horizonte sits at the heart of Minas Gerais , where the old Portuguese towns of Ouro Preto , Tiradentes and Diamantina drip with colonial history. The South , encompassing the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, boasts the spectacular Iguaçu Falls on the border with Argentina – one of the great natural wonders of South America. From Curitiba the scenic Serra Verde Express snakes down to the coast, where you can chill out on Ilha do Mel or beach-hop around Florianópolis .

Central Brazil is dominated by an enormous plateau of savannah and rock escarpments, the Planalto Central . In the middle stands Brasília , the country’s space-age capital, built from scratch in the late 1950s. The city is the gateway to Brazil’s interior, comprising Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul , and the vast Pantanal , the largest wetland in the world and the richest wildlife reserve anywhere in the Americas. To the north and west Mato Grosso shades into the Amazon , the world’s largest river basin and a mosaic of jungle, rivers and marshland that also contains two major cities – Belém , at the mouth of the Amazon itself, and Manaus , some 1600km upstream.
The other major sub-region of Brazil is the Northeast (including Bahia ), the first part of Brazil to be settled by the Portuguese and the place where colonial remnants are thicker on the ground than anywhere else in the country – notably in the atmospheric Afro-Brazilian cities of Salvador and São Luís and the gorgeous town of Olinda . It’s a region of dramatic contrasts: a lush tropical coastline quickly gives way to the sertão , a semi-arid interior sprinkled with mysterious monoliths, prehistoric remnants and wild, rarely visited national parks. Most travellers stick to the beaches: party centrals Morro de São Paulo and Porto de Galinhas , sleepy Maragogi , beach-buggy paradise Natal , backpacker haven Praia da Pipa , and the dunes and kite-surfing enclaves of Canoa Quebrada and Jericoacoara . Finally, if you can afford it, the pricey but idyllic offshore island chain of Fernando de Noronha is one of the world’s great natural hideaways.

FACT FILE
• At around 210 million, Brazil has the fifth largest population in the world. It’s also the fifth largest country.
• Brazil is estimated to be around 65 percent Catholic ; Protestant religions account for around 22 percent (mostly Evangelical and Pentecostal).
• The brazil nut comes from a tree of the same name, and really does grow in the jungles of Brazil, though Bolivia exports more of them. In Brazil the nuts are called castanhas-do-pará .
• Rio-born author Paulo Coelho has sold around 150 million books worldwide ( The Alchemist accounts for around 65 million), making him by far the bestselling writer in Portuguese of all time.
• Born in Minas Gerais in 1940, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé , is generally regarded as the greatest football player of all time. He is the only player to have been in World Cup-winning teams three times and is the all-time leading goal scorer for Brazil (77). Brazil has won the World Cup a record five times.
< Back to Introduction to Brazil
When to go
Brazil splits into four distinct climatic regions. The coldest part is the South and Southeast , the region roughly from central Minas Gerais to Rio Grande do Sul that includes Belo Horizonte, São Paulo and Porto Alegre. Here, there’s a distinct winter between June and September, with occasional cold, wind and rain. Although Brazilians complain, it’s all fairly mild to anyone coming from the US or UK. Temperatures rarely hit freezing overnight, and when they do it’s featured on the news. The coldest part is the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, in the extreme south of the country, but even here there are many warm, bright days in winter, and the summer (Dec–March) is hot. Only in Santa Catarina’s central highlands does it (very occasionally) snow.

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CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES, SALVADOR
The coastal climate is exceptionally good. Brazil has been called a “crab civilization” because most of its population lives on or near the coast – and with good reason. Seven thousand kilometres of coastline, from Paraná to near the equator, bask under a warm tropical climate. There is a “winter”, when there are cloudy days and sometimes the temperature dips below 25°C (77°F), and a rainy season , when tropical downpours are severe enough to kill dozens in flash floods and landslides. In Rio and points south, the rains last from October through to January, but in the Northeast they last about three months from April in Fortaleza and Salvador, and from May in Recife. Even in wint