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countries are able to offer as great a variety of tourist options as
Brazil. With a land mass the size of a continent - more than 8
million km - in terms of area, the nation is fifth in the world,
exceeded only by Russia, Canada, the USA and China, occupying almost
half of South America. It embraces contrasting ecosystems such
as the Amazon Forest and the Atlantic Forest with their incredibly
luxuriant woodlands, the Cerrado (scrublands) and the Caatinga (arid
lands) with their twisted trees and landscape that changes radically
according to the seasons, the Pantanal (marshland) with its flood
plains teeming with an amazingly rich chain of animal
reproduction.
Intersected to the north
by the Equator and to the south-east by the Tropic of Capricorn,
Brazil this land-mass, almost entirely located in a low altitude
inter-tropical zone, average temperatures are mainly above 20
degrees centigrade. For the tourist, this means the all year round
opportunity to enjoy one of the hundreds of beaches that are
scattered along the 7,400 metres of highly-favoured coastline, with
wind systems that are ideal for sailing and activities to suit all
tastes: white sandy beaches, beaches with waves that are ideal for
surfers, popular city beaches or semi-wild beaches where few have
ever stepped. There are no private beaches in Brazil.
Divided into five
geographical regions - North, North-East, Centre-West, South and
South-East - the country offers widely differing tourist options in
each of them. Although they all have one feature in common in the
form of Brazil's natural beauty, each one has its own special
feature - something that speaks out - to make discovering Brazil an
adventure that runs from rivers, valleys and mountains of rare
beauty to a colonial past and history that began in the
16th century.
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