A country where the flight between two cities is often cheaper, and always faster, than the overnight coach
Brazil is bigger than continental Europe, and that is the one fact that actually changes a plan: Rio to Manaus is four hours by air, and that is the only way in — there is no road, you fly or take the river. Put more than three destinations into a fortnight and most of the trip happens in planes and airports.
EU and UK passports enter visa-free for up to 90 days; US, Canadian and Australian passports have needed a paid e-visa since April 2025. Beyond that, you need a passport valid for six months and a return ticket. The usual arrival points are São Paulo and Rio: Guarulhos airport (GRU) is 21 km from central São Paulo and Rio's GIG 13 km from the city centre, both as the crow flies.
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Domestic flights here do the job trains do in Europe. Three big carriers — Gol, Latam and Azul — fly densely and fares are lower than expected if you book a month out; coaches only make sense on runs under six hours, like Rio to São Paulo. A route of Rio, Salvador and the Iguaçu falls means at least three flights and three days spent moving.
Money is simpler than in neighbouring Argentina: the real has no parallel exchange rate the way the Argentine peso does, cards work everywhere, and Pix — the instant phone transfer the whole country uses — traditionally needs a local tax number (CPF); a few foreign apps have recently found a way around that, but for a short stay a card remains the simplest method. Keep small cash for markets and beach stalls, not for anything else.
Brasília rose on empty highland and opened on 21 April 1960, forty-one months after the first spade. Lúcio Costa drew the city plan, Oscar Niemeyer the buildings. From the air the city looks like an aeroplane, which was not the intention but is how it came out.
Carnival starts forty-seven days before Easter, so it falls between early February and early March depending on the year. Rio's Sambadrome, where the samba schools compete, was designed by Niemeyer and built in 1984 in a hundred and thirty days.
The first seedlings were, by tradition, brought in from French Guiana in 1727, hidden in a bouquet the governor's wife gave a Brazilian officer. Two hundred years later Brazil was producing more than half the world's coffee.
Along its entire Brazilian course, the Amazon proper is crossed by no bridge at all. You take a ferry or you fly. The one bridge in the region, the Rio Negro bridge at Manaus, crosses a tributary rather than the Amazon itself.
The Zerão stadium in Macapá was built so the equator runs exactly through the halfway line. Each side plays a half in its own hemisphere. The line is marked in the stands too.
Brazil holds more mammal, fish, amphibian and plant species than any other country. In the Amazon alone a new species is described every two days on average — which means any list you read is already out of date.
This isn't a ranking — it's a route. Any one of these could carry a whole trip.
An eighteenth-century mining town in the hills of Minas Gerais, all baroque churches and cobbles on a slope. Enough gold came out of here to move European prices. Six hours by coach from Rio, or an hour's flight to Belo Horizonte and two hours by road.
A colonial port between Rio and São Paulo, with streets the tide deliberately floods in order to clean them. No cars in the centre, schooners out to the islands, waterfalls in the hills behind. Four hours by coach from Rio and the easiest escape from the city there is.
Sand dunes to the horizon with thousands of green and blue lagoons between them. It only works from July to September: before that the lagoons have not filled, after that they have dried. The base at Barreirinhas is reached via São Luís.
You do not enter the rainforest from its edge but from Manaus, upriver by boat, to a lodge where you sleep. The Rio Negro at Manaus peaks in June and bottoms out in October, on average ten metres lower.
The largest wetland on earth and the place where jaguars are genuinely seen — statistically more often than in the Amazon, where the forest is too dense. The season is May to October, when the water drops and animals gather along the rivers. Access is from Cuiabá or Campo Grande.
Brazil is the only country in the Americas that speaks Portuguese, and more people speak it there than in every other country combined. The border was drawn in 1494, by a treaty in which Spain and Portugal split the world along an imaginary line in the Atlantic.
The Amazon carries around a fifth of all the fresh water that reaches the oceans. It is so powerful that its fresh water can be detected a hundred kilometres offshore, in the open sea.
Short answers to what people ask most before setting out.
EU and UK passports do not — tourist stays of up to 90 days are visa-free. US, Canadian and Australian passports have needed a paid e-visa since April 2025. Either way you need a passport valid for at least six months and proof of onward travel; yellow fever vaccination is not required on most routes, but is asked for if you enter the Amazon from a risk country.
Fourteen is the minimum for three destinations, and that includes three internal flights. Ten days does two — usually Rio and the Iguaçu falls, or Rio and Salvador. Under a week does not repay the journey: getting there and back eats two days.
In the big cities the rules are the ones that apply in any large Latin American city: do not take your phone out on the street without reason, do not walk into favelas without a guide, and do not take documents and cards to the beach. Outside the cities — Paraty, Iguaçu, the wine and mountain country — it is not the issue.
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The whole of Brazil fits into one query — six questions and you know which of them suits you.
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All photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under the licence stated beside each one.
