Brazil: The Rough Guide (Rough Guide Travel Guides) - Softcover

Cleary, David; Jenkins, Dilwyn; Marshall, Oliver; Rough Guides

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1858281024 ISBN 13: 9781858281025

Publisher: Rough Guides, 1994

Synopsis

This fully revised second edition of this guide is full of money-saving advice and quirky tips useful for travellers who want to really discover the country. It contains detailed coverage of Brazilian history and monuments, hundreds of small towns and villages throughout the country, as well as full details on Rio, Sao Paulo, Salvador, Recife, Brasilia, Manaus and the other cities. It also covers the rivers and forests of Amazonia, the rolling pampas of the southeast, and the tropical coastline and harsh interior of the northeast. Practical information includes: comprehensive listings of accommodation, from hostels to five-star hotels; hundreds of bars and places to eat; and tips for drivers and independent travellers (full details of local trains, buses and ferries - how to use them, how to save money). Details are given of Brazil's magnificent festas - not just carnaval. This guide also contains background articles on literature, music, race and the environment.

About this title

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.

Excerpt. © 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rough Guides
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1858281024
• ISBN 13: 9781858281025
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 688