Product Description

The Rough Guide to Brazil is the essential guide to one of South America's most tantalising destinations. Detailed accounts of the best attractions Brazil has to offer, along with the clearest maps and plans, showcase this amazingly diverse country to aid both your trip planning and on-the-ground experience. With expert advice and background, the full-colour section details the famous Rio carnival, the world's biggest rainforest - the Amazon and the most fantastic wildlife and beaches, whilst the guide itself is full of informative text on the practical and cultural nuances of visiting Brazil, from wildlife safaris in the Pantanal to the concrete architecture of Brasilia. Read about Brazil’s football successes and find out more about the Capoeira music and culture that is expanding rapidly in popularity across Europe. At every point, the Rough Guide steers you in the right direction to find the best hotels in Brazil, recommended Brazil restaurants, cafes and shops across every price range, giving you clear, balanced reviews and honest, first-hand opinions. Make the most of your holiday with The Rough Guide to Brazil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69952 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 820 pages

British Bulletin of Publications on Latin America, October 1995
Maintains the high standards established by the Rough Guide series.

Excerpted from Brazil: the Rough Guide by David Cleary, Dilwyn Jenkins, Oliver Marshall, Jim Hine. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
When to go

Brazil splits into four distinct climatic regions. The coldest part - in fact the only part of Brazil which ever gets really cold - is the South and Southeast, the region roughly from central Minas Gerais to Rio Grande do Sul, which includes Belo Horizonte, São Paulo and Porto Alegre. Here, there's a distinct winter between June and September, with occasional cold, wind and rain. However, although Brazilians complain, it's all fairly mild. Temperatures rarely hit freezing overnight, and when they do it's featured on the TV 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 occasionally snow.

The coastal climate is exceptionally good. Brazil has been called a "crab civilization" because most of its population lives on or near the coast - 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 it can really pour. In Rio the rains last from October through to January, but they come much earlier in the Northeast, lasting about three months from April in Fortaleza and Salvador, and from May in Recife. Even in winter or the rainy season, the weather will be excellent much of the time.

The Northeast is too hot to have a winter. Nowhere is the average monthly temperature below 25°C (77°F) and the interior, semi-arid at the best of times, often soars beyond that - regularly to as much as 40°C (104°F). Rain is sparse and irregular, although violent. Amazonia is stereotyped as being steamy jungle with constant rainfall, but much of the region has a distinct dry season - apparently getting longer every year in the most deforested areas of east and west Amazonia. And in the large expanses of savanna in the northern and central Amazon basin, rainfall is far from constant. Belém is closest to the image of a steamy tropical city: it rains there an awful lot from January to May, and merely quite a lot for the rest of the year. Manaus and central Amazonia, in contrast, have a marked dry season from July to October.

Customer Reviews

Brazil guide.
Brazil is a huge country.
I rented a car to get out of Fortaleza, drove around for one week, 1500km and the places i visied is covered in about 1/2 page in the Rough Guide.
The Rough Guide is a good book, but the country is too big to be covered in one book.