Product Description

The Rough Guide to Brazil is the most comprehensive and detailed guide to the largest country in South America. Filled with entertaining indepth accounts of all the major cities and towns, as well as the best beaches, jungle tours, and hiking trips. A full colour introduction gives an immediate flavour of the vibrant country with striking photographs of the country's many attractions and activities, from joining the parades at the Rio Carnival to taking a boat trip up the Amazon. There is informative background on everything from Brazilian art to the most infamous favelas (shanty towns) giving the reader a sound context to help understand the country they are visiting. Practical advice on getting around is supported by over 70 maps and plans and extensive listings sections giving insightful reviews into accommodation, restaurants and bars for every budget.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #300888 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 864 pages

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

About the Author
David Cleary is an anthropologist by trade and first went to Brazil in1984 and has since lived there off and on for six years. Dilwyn Jenkinshas been travelling to South America since the age of eighteen. Afterworking as a teacher and journalist, he has led expeditions to and madefilms with indigenous groups in the Amazon. He is also the author of The Rough Guide to Peru. Oliver Marshall has been visiting Brazil forwork, study and, above all, pleasure since 1982. He is currentlyworking at the University of Oxford's Centre for Brazilian Studies.

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.