The most heavily populated and economically advanced part of the country is the Southeast, where the three largest cities - São Paulo , Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte - form a triangle around which the economy pivots. All are worth visiting in their own right, though Rio, one of the world's most stupendously sited cities, stands head and shoulders above the lot. The South , encompassing the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, stretches down to the borders with Uruguay and northern Argentina, and westwards to Paraguay, and includes much of the enormous Paraná river system. The spectacular Iguaçu Falls (at the northernmost point where Brazil and Argentina meet) are one of the great natural wonders of South America.

The vast hinterland of the South and Southeast is often called the Centre-West and includes an enormous central plateau of savanna and rock escarpments, the Planalto Central . In the middle stands Brasília , the country's space-age capital, built from nothing in the late 1950s and still developing today. The capital is the gateway to a vast interior, the Mato Grosso , only fully charted and settled over the last three decades; it includes the mighty Pantanal swampland, the richest wildlife reserve on the continent. North and west, the Mato Grosso shades into the Amazon , a mosaic of jungle, rivers, savanna and marshland that also contains two major cities - Belém , at the mouth of the Amazon itself, and Manaus , some 1600km upstream. The tributaries of the Amazon, rivers like the Tapajós, the Xingu, the Negro, the Araguaia or the Tocantins, are virtually unknown outside Brazil, but each is a huge river system in its own right.

 

The other major sub-region of Brazil is the Northeast , the part of the country that curves out into the Atlantic Ocean. This was the first part of Brazil to be settled by the Portuguese and colonial remains are thicker on the ground here than anywhere else in the country - notably in the cities of Salvador and São Luís and the lovely town of Olinda . It's a region of dramatic contrasts: a lush, tropical coastline with the best beaches in Brazil, slipping inland into the sertão, a semi-arid interior plagued by drought and appallingly unequal land distribution. All the major cities of the Northeast are on the coast; the two most famous are Salvador and Recife , both magical blends of Africa, Portugal and the Americas, but Fortaleza is also impressive, bristling with skyscrapers and justly proud of its progressive culture.
 
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