Robinson Alex - Brazil

There are few countries as beautiful and vibrant as Brazil with nature so exuberant and people so welcoming. Thousands of miles of pristine and usually deserted beaches line the coast, some pounded by superb surf, others lapped by a gentle sea. They are backed by dunes the size of deserts, or forests of swaying coconut palms. Offshore, jewel-like islands offer some of the best diving and snorkelling in the South Atlantic.

The table-top mountains of the Brazilian interior are drained by mineral-rich rivers that tumble through gorges and rush over spectacular tiered waterfalls. In the Amazon, virgin forest stretches unbroken for more than 2500 km in every direction and the earth is a tapestry of green broken by a filigree of rivers. There are islands here too, the largest bigger than Denmark, and wilder and more forested than Borneo. The Pantanal, the world’s biggest wetland, offers the best wildlife watching in the western hemisphere.

The tiny gold-mining towns of Goiás and Minas Gerais contrast with the busy metropolises of São Paulo, Salvador and Recife, which offer the most exciting and surprising urban culture in Latin America. And then there’s Rio, the jewel in the country’s urban crown, with its islands, mountains and beautiful beaches.

But best of all there are the Brazilians, in all their joyful diversity. The peoples of Portugal, Africa and indigenous America mingled here with Spanish, Italians, Japanese, Jews, Germans and Arabs. Kibe and sushi, bierfests and rodeos are as much a part of the culture as samba and football.

Brazil is becoming big news after the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ and the 2016 Olympics. So come before Brazil becomes yet another destination on the exotic travel circuit, and have it all to yourself.

Alex Robinson
Gardênia
Robinson

Best of
Brazil

top things to do and see

Rio de Janeiro

Known to the locals as the City of Marvels, 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. The beaches and music are wonderful, and carnival is one of the world’s greatest spectacles..

São Paulo

This is the party capital with Brazil’s best music and nightlife. 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 finest nightlife, restaurants, high-end shopping and popular culture in South America..

Iguaçu Falls

When President Theodore Roosevelt’s wife saw this magnificent cascade straddling the border with Argentina and Paraguay she reputedly said ‘poor Niagara’. Allow at least two days to explore the waterfalls and the temperate rainforests of the surrounding national park..

Bahia

Cariocas flock to the southern beaches for their holidays. The most popular destination is the state of Bahia, offering a string of palm-shaded silvery strands lining its coast and islands. Also here is the largest colonial city in the Americas, Salvador, whose street carnival is one of Brazil’s best..

Carnival in Pernambuco

It’s not just Rio that hosts a raucous Mardi Gras carnival – the whole of Brazil celebrates. Come to Pernambuco state for the most traditional Carnaval which focuses on Recife and its twin city Olinda. Streets reverberate with maracatu and frevo rhythms and erupt in a riot of colour and dance..

Jericoacoara

Originally discovered by São Paulo hippies in the 1970s, over the decades this fishing community in Ceará state has turned into a laid-back boho surf town, with beachside restaurants, a starlit nightlife, sweeping dunes, kilometres of empty sands and possibly the best kite-surfing in the world..

Atins

A tiny beach town in the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park with sandy streets in an astonishing landscape: on one side, a 100-km-deep desert of shifting sand dunes pocked with aquamarine lakes, on the other, endless beaches washed by shallow lagoons and dotted with blood-red scarlet ibis and snowy-white egrets..

Ilha de Marajó

The world’s largest river island covers an area as large as Denmark and sits in the mouth of the Amazon. There is nowhere quite like it on earth, with long, sweeping river beaches and coconut-shaded coves, ranches and dusty towns patrolled by police on buffalo-back and skies filled with brilliantly coloured tropical birds..

Alter do Chão

A tiny village in the Amazon set on Caribbean white-sand beaches fringing a river nearly as wide as the English Channel. Watch bubble-gum pink dolphins play at sunset and trek into the Amazon rainforest to see monkeys, sloths and metre-long macaws..

Chapada dos Veadeiros

These table-top mountains of rust-coloured granite and bone-white quartz are cut by countless mountain streams which drop in myriad waterfalls into long, broad valleys swathed with swaying grasslands and dotted stands of stately buriti palm. Come for some of central Brazil’s best trekking, rappelling and canyoning..