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BRAZIL
A little bit of history...
The Portuguese navigator Alves Cabral first
set foot in Brazil in 1500 - so as well as everyone else’s millennium,
Brazilians celebrated their own half-millennium in 2000.
Towns which retain the legacy of these early colonists can still be
visited today, many elegant mansions and cobbled streets having been
protected either by isolation or national decree. But don’t imagine Brazil
is all preserved in aspic - it’s a vibrant place. Modern cities,
spectacular carnival and new year celebrations, informal restaurants and
friendly bars. It’s a land of superlatives - the world’s mightiest river;
the most breathtaking waterfalls, vast equatorial rainforest and
palm-kissed beaches that stretch as far as the eye can see. You’ll find
that Brazilians rarely do things by halves.
Brazil stands out from the rest of the countries, which make up South
America, not solely because it is a former Portuguese colony rather than
Spanish one. It is also an incredibly sensual country, its people are
inveterate partygoers. It is the land of samba, carnival and beach
culture. While Rio de Janeiro might claim to be the most beautiful city in
the world, Sao Paulo could be one of the most industrious. Brazil is the
largest South American republic; only Ecuador and Chile do not have a
border with it. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world and has
the sixth largest population and the 11th largest GDP. There are five
distinctive geographical regions. Over one third of the country is in the
Amazon Basin, the most diverse jungle in the world in terms of plant and
animal life. The coastal strip is sandwiched between the Atlantic and the
sheer mountainsides of the Great Escarpment rising to the Planalto
Brasileiro. Almost every state has some land in this central plain. In the
south there is another river basin, the Parana-Paranagua basin which like
the Amazon, contains a unique ecosystem, the Pantanal. The final region is
the Guiana highlands, which lies north of the Amazon and is part forest,
part desert. Brazil’s people are even more diverse. Today there are
probably only 300,000 indigenous people remaining but still new tribes are
being discovered every decade. The rest of the population comprises
Europeans, most significantly, Portuguese, Germans and Italians, as well
as Africans who were originally brought over as slaves (The University of
Bahia in Salvador boasts the only chair in Yoruba in the Western
hemisphere). There is also a large Japanese population centred on Sao
Paulo. Each of these races has brought its cultures, customs and language
that have made their mark on modern Brazil, turning it into a veritable
melting pot.
Credits:
Brazil Travel |
