Facts About Brazil

Stretching 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from east to west and 2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers) from north to south in South America, Brazil is the world's largest tropical country. The only nations that are larger are the Temperate Zone lands of Russia, Canada, China, and the United States. Brazil has more than 140 million people spread unevenly over its huge land area, making it the sixth most populous country in the world.

Most of Brazil's 4,500-mile (7,200-kilometer) Atlantic coastline is rimmed with sandy beaches and narrow but fertile coastal plains interspersed with low hills. In the south, however, these are broken up by spurs of the Serra do Mar. This range of coastal mountains is actually the rim of the Brazilian Plateau. In the south, from Sao Paulo almost to Porto Alegre, the gently rolling plateau is underlain mostly by lava flows that dip gradually westward to the plains of the Paraguay (Paraguai) River.

Climate: mostly tropical, but temperate in south
Terrain: mostly flat to rolling lowlands in north; some plains, hills, mountains, and narrow coastal belt
Ethnic groups: white (includes Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish) 55%, mixed white and black 38%, black 6%, other (includes Japanese, Arab, Amerindian) 1%
Religions: Roman Catholic (nominal) 98%
Languages: Portuguese (official), Spanish, English, French

• Rio de Janeiro : Rio is the Cidade Maravilhosa (Marvellous City). Jammed into the world's most beautiful setting - between ocean and escarpment - are seven million Cariocas, as Rio's inhabitants are called. The Cariocas pursue pleasure like no other people: beaches and the body beautiful; samba and beer; football and the local firewater, cachaça (rum).
• Brasília : Brasília, Brazil's capital since 21 April 1960. It was designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, urban planner Lucio Costa and landscape architect Burle Marx, the city was built in an incredible three years (1957-60) by millions of dirt-poor peasants working around the clock.
• São Paulo : São Paulo can be an intimidating place but, if you know someone to show you around or you like big cities, it offers the excitement and nightlife of one of the world's most dynamic places. Attractions include the baroque Teatro Municipal, Niemeyer's Edifício Copan, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and the 16th-century Patío do Colégio.
• The Amazon: The Amazon is a gigantic system of rivers and forests, covering almost half of Brazil and extending into neighboring countries. The wide stretch of river known as Rio Amazonas runs between the cities of Manaus and Belém, though the various rivers that join to form it provide a navigable route for ocean-going vessels to the other side of the South American continent.
  
  The Amazon Basin covers an area almost the size of the contiguous United States. Beginning just 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean in the ice fields of the Andes, the Amazon River rolls 4,000 miles eastward to the Atlantic -- in volume nearly one-quarter of the world's freshwater flow. So mighty is this outflow of fresh water into the ocean that a Spanish explorer in 1500 named it the "Sweet Sea," failing to comprehend that it might be a river.
  
  Amazônia is recognized as the planet's greatest reserve of life forms. Here the largest continuous expanse of tropical forest on Earth harbors approximately one-third of her species. Despite three centuries of scientific study, only a small fraction of its biological richness has been revealed.
  
  
• The Pantanal: The Amazon may have all the fame and glory, but the Pantanal is a far better place to see wildlife. This vast area of wetlands, about half the size of France, lies in the far west of Brazil and extends into the border regions of Bolivia and Paraguay.

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