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73 destinations
Water Abrolhos Archipelago
"Humpback mothers calve above coral mushrooms thirty metres tall that grow nowhere else."
Water Alter do Chão
"Beaches of white sand that vanish under the river from December, and come back in August."
Water Anavilhanas
"Four hundred forested islands on rust-dark water that rises ten metres and floods the forest."
Mountain Aparados da Serra
"A five-hundred-metre waterfall drops straight off the rim into a gorge two kilometres wide."
Wilderness Bananal Island
"The world's largest river island spends much of the year under the water that made it."
City Belém
"Buyers hold açaí berries up to a phone torch at half four in the morning."
City Bom Jesus da Lapa
"A church inside a limestone cave above the São Francisco, where two million come each year."
Water Bonito
"Rivers so transparent the fish cast shadows on the white sand riverbed below you."
City Brasília
"A modernist capital conjured from red dust where Niemeyer's concrete curves defy the cerrado."
Water Cânion do Xingó
"Sixty-five kilometres of canyon, a hundred and seventy metres deep, and a dam filled it."
Water Canoa Quebrada
"A crescent moon and star cut into thirty-metre red cliffs, and nobody agrees who carved them."
Wilderness Canudos
"Canudos fell with four left in a trench: two men, an old man, a boy."
Mountain Canyon Guartelá
"A river that refused to go around cut Brazil's longest canyon dead straight for thirty kilometres."
Water Capitólio
"A dam flooded the canyons, so you sail inside them, and the boatmen cut the engines."
Wilderness Caraça Natural Park
"Maned wolves climb the church steps for a tray of food, on no timetable at all."
Mountain Chapada das Mesas
"Mesas to the horizon, and a seventy-metre fall past a rock they read as the saint."
Mountain Chapada Diamantina
"A three-hundred-and-eighty-metre waterfall, in a park with no signposts and no phone signal."
Wilderness Chapada dos Veadeiros
"One trail crosses rock older than Pangaea, through abandoned crystal diggings, to a 120-metre fall."
Water Conceição do Mato Dentro
"Three hundred and fifty-six springs rise in one park; the waterfalls below are what they become."
City Congonhas
"Twelve life-size soapstone prophets, each holding his own prophecy in Latin, cut by a failing sculptor."
Wilderness Cristalino Private Reserve
"Climb 250 steps before five and watch the flying rivers lift off the canopy below you."
Water Delta do Parnaíba
"Every dusk, thousands of scarlet ibis come in to sleep in the mangrove canopy."
City Diamantina
"A diamond-rush town on a mountainside where Brasília's builder grew up in a mud-and-stick house."
Water Fernando de Noronha
"Volcanic spires rising from water so clear the seafloor glows up at you from the clifftop."
Water Foz do Iguaçu
"Two hundred and seventy-five waterfalls, and the one at the centre is called the Devil's Throat."
City Goiás Velho
"Hooded men with torches run the streets at midnight, hunting Christ through an eighteenth-century gold town."
Wilderness Ilha de Marajó
"The police here ride buffalo, because the flooded ground defeats anything with wheels."
Water Ilha Grande
"Ruins of a maximum-security prison dissolving into Atlantic Forest on a World Heritage island."
City Inhotim
"A legally recognised botanical garden with twenty-four art galleries planted through it."
Water Itacaré
"The forest is still standing here because the cacao needed its shade."
Wilderness Itaúnas
"Sand dunes that swallowed an entire village, now a forró-dancing outpost on a wild coast."
Water Jericoacoara
"In July the sun sets exactly through the cleft in the Pedra Furada."
Wilderness Lençóis Maranhenses
"Thousands of rain-filled lagoons between white dunes stretching to the horizon like another planet."
Water Mangue Seco
"Dunes advancing over the coconut groves, eight-metre palms buried to the tips of their fronds."
Water Maués
"Guaraná starts as a hard stick, grated into water on the tongue of a fish."
Water Novo Airão
"In tea-dark water, pink dolphins take chilled fish from staff hands; you may touch, never feed."
City Olinda
"Candy-coloured colonial streets tumbling downhill to the sea, alive with maracatu drums and giant puppets."
City Ouro Preto
"Baroque churches dripping gold leaf in a mining town where the cobblestones still remember revolution."
Wilderness Pantanal
"When the water drops the animals come out, and the odds on a jaguar shorten."
City Paranapiacaba
"A fog-wrapped Victorian railway village built by the British in the Atlantic Forest above São Paulo."
City Paraty
"A colonial port the sea washes through on spring tides, with rainforest at its back."
City Parintins
"Two bulls, three nights, and a title decided by seven tenths of a point."
Mountain Pedra Azul
"A granite monolith blue with lichen, erupting from Atlantic Forest like a wave."
City Pirenópolis
"A colonial gold town erupting in costumed cavalry battles between Moors and Christians every Pentecost."
City Pomerode
"Half-timbered Fachwerk houses by the hundred, in a town whose name means the Pomeranians' clearing."
Water Praia da Pipa
"Dolphins hunting a bay seven hundred metres across, flinging their catch clear of the water."
Water Praia do Rosa
"Right whales leave Antarctica to calve in this bay, and you watch from the headland."
Water Praia dos Carneiros
"A chapel alone on the sand, and reef pools that open as the tide drops away."
Water Presidente Figueiredo
"More than a hundred waterfalls in one municipality, and some of them run red as tea."
City Rio de Janeiro
"Granite peaks erupting from tropical forest between lagoon and ocean, a landscape no city should have."
City Salvador
"Drum rhythms ricocheting off colonial walls where song, dance and combat happen at once."
City São João del-Rei
"Baroque towers answering each other across a valley, ringing the sex of whoever has just died."
Mountain São Joaquim
"Apple orchards under frost in a highland town where Brazil forgets it's supposed to be tropical."
Mountain São José dos Ausentes
"The state's biggest fazenda went to auction twice because its owners never turned up."
City São Luís
"Hand-painted Portuguese tiles across four thousand colonial houses, cooling the walls against equatorial heat."
City São Miguel das Missões
"Sandstone ruins of a Jesuit republic the Guaraní built, carved, and then lost."
Wilderness Serra da Canastra
"The São Francisco rises on this plateau and falls 186 metres fourteen kilometres later."
Wilderness Serra do Cipó
"Stone meadows of flowers that hold their shape long after they dry, along a quartzite spine."
Mountain Serra do Rio do Rastro
"Hairpins carved into a sheer cliff face, climbing out of the lowlands and into cloud."
Mountain Serra dos Órgãos
"Brazilian climbing began here in 1912, on a human pyramid, with pitons the blacksmith forged himself."
Wilderness Sete Cidades
"Sandstone eroded into what look like seven separate cities, with rock paintings inside them."
Mountain Triunfo
"Fog on dry-stone walls, in a scrap of rainforest stranded above the drought country."
Mountain Urubici
"Frost-coated araucaria forests and canyon rims at the frozen heart of subtropical Brazil."
Wilderness Vale do Catimbau
"Sandstone cathedrals hiding paintings made under the overhangs some six thousand years ago."
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Legendary Destinations
Little-known places, unlike anywhere else, that leave you awestruck and full of stories.
9 destinations
Legendary Destination
Old stone streets below. A route to space nearby.
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Legendary Destination
Blue pools beyond the falls, with Kalunga guides showing the way.
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Legendary Destination
Break open the past here and you may find a fish in stone.
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Legendary Destination
A spring where sinking is harder than floating.
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Legendary Destination
The story moves to its next scene. So does the audience.
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Legendary Destination
The roof has openings. Below them, a vast spear of stone hangs in the air.
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Legendary Destination
Listen inside the church. The language has crossed an ocean.
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Legendary Destination
On this mountain, people escaping slavery built a home of their own.
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Legendary Destination
The painters are long gone. Their lives remain on the sandstone.
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