Holidays to Brazil

Unlike almost everywhere else in Latin America, it was the Portuguese who colonised Brazil. Starting in around 1534, the first so-called ‘captaincies’ – essentially chaotic fiefdoms – were soon merged into a single colony which prospered on sugar cane. Those plantations were largely worked by African slaves whose descendants today help give a distinctive ‘look’ and mood to Brazil’s people and culture. By the early 1700s fortune-hunters were penetrating the interior and their quest for indigenous slaves soon turned into the world’s longest gold rush with the continent’s largest mines.The colony’s turbulent relationship with Portugal concluded with independence in 1825.

Put simply Brazil does little by halves. Perhaps nothing underlines its breathtaking uniqueness more than the fact that even now over fifty – more than anywhere else – ‘uncontacted tribes’ remain deep in the Amazonian forest. It’s the mighty Amazon River, of course, and its immense tributaries with which Brazil is synonymous. Their enveloping ’lungs of the world’ rainforest is earth’s largest and most diverse, and its jaw-dropping biodiversity is unmatched; one in ten species live here.

The country’s (if not the continent’s) best wildlife viewing is in the Pantanal, a vast seasonally-flooded wetland bordering Bolivia and Paraguay. This UNESCO Biosphere Reserve boasts not just incredible birdlife and fish but a wonderful array of curious mammals such as peccaries, tapirs, capybaras and giant otters. More fearsome predators include caimans and anacondas while topping the exotic list are exquisite ocelots and elusive jaguars.

As though unwilling to be outdone, Brazil’s ethnic mix is also particularly diverse (and probably at its most flamboyant during Carnaval). Drawing on people with roots in Europe, Asia and Africa, this multi-flavoured cultural stew is exuberantly showcased in great cities like Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Salvador that, somehow, make a virtue of their showy glamour and edgy grit. For all its particular earthiness, Rio’s laurels rest visibly on its spectacular setting beside the Atlantic: the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain, Copacabana Beach and Christ the Redeemer statue atop a peak in Tijuca Forest.

Further up the coast stand smaller cities and towns with charming, almost time-forgotten colonial enclaves fizzing with life and pulsating to music. You might well put up your feet or lay down a towel on one of myriad white-sand beaches that bejewel nearly five thousand miles of tropical coastline. The most memorable soaking, though, is likely to be at Iguacu Falls, an almost fantasy-landscape of (depending on water levels) up to 275 separate waterfalls along a nearly two-mile-long cliff edge.
 
Brazil holidays at a glance

• Due to its sheer size the country can be visited all year round
• Cultural melting pot of music, food and architecture
• Spectacular beaches and stunning islands
• Rich in wildlife - up to 4 million species of plants and animals
• Diverse topography - from mountains to beaches, jungles to wetlands
• One of the largest and most stunning waterfalls in the world - Iguacu falls
• World-renowned Carnival (famously in Rio but celebrated all over Brazil)