Quick Bird's eye view of Brazil's Geography or Selling Brazil made easy for Travel Agents

Before there ever existed the country of Brazil or any other country, there was the land. Map I

This article was originally thought to assist travel agents 

Brazil, the largest country in South America has a population of around 211 million people, is the fifth largest country in the world right after the US, Canada, China and Russia and  is divided into 26 states plus the Federal District around Brasília. The country boasts 5.700 municipalities (cities) of which 2.694 are considered to have something of interest to tourists(National,Internationalor regional ). They are subdivided into 333 tourism regions according to the Tourism Map of Brazil issued in 2019 by the Ministry of Tourism.  

But suppose you are a travel agent or an independent traveler from anywhere in the world, how do you sort these confusing numbers and make your way through all these seemingly conflicting information when all you want is to find a perfect beach, a waterfall, see wildlife, meet nice people when you finally make it to the country?

My suggestion is that we begin from the beginning. It is almost a biblical thing. Before anything happened on Earth, before man, animals, plants, water and waterfalls God created the Earth, preparing it to be the place where life would occur much much later on. That includes includes You.

So the first thing I do is to show you a clean, empty outline map  of Brazil to represent the idea that before there was a Republic of Brazil there was the land where nature so profusely created all the species and varieties of fish, monkeys, plants, ants, animals, palm trees, giant trees, rivers, large rivers, streams, waterfalls of all kinds, beaches, forests, jungles, arid forests and so on.

Later, again much, much later men and women came to be. Hundreds of native tribes and peoples all the way to the day when Europeans, Asians and people from all over came to "The Land to create present-day Brazil.

To begin with, Nature created, before allowing Brazil to be, a big nearly undescribable JUNGLE, the Amazon Jungle up in the North. It covers more than 50% of Brazil's landmass and spills over to neighboring countries: Bolivia,Peru,Colombia,Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, Surinam and France - yes France is a neighboring country, owner of the full-flegded Overseas Department of Guyane, knowns as French Guyana.  

Brazil simplified: A huge Jungle in the North and More Jungle to the East going South - Map 2

To the East, it Created more JUNGLE along the Coastline going all the way to the South and advancing into Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. The name of this second JUNGLE is Atlantic Forest.  It is a gorgeous JUNGLE followed by beaches, many beaches, small beaches, huge beaches. Open sea beaches, enclosed, hard to get to beaches mainly along the first stretch of Atlantic Forest in what is known today as the Brazilian Northeast states (You can check the states CE,RN,PB,PE,AL and BA on map 6). Most of the beaches in this part of the coastline are coconut-tree-dotted beaches even though they are not natural of the land. They are immimgrant species that have made Brazil home for the last 400 yeas at least. As the Atlantic Forests get to the Southeast area of modern-Brazil, it starts to grow wider  as it travels southward to meet the Pampa Grasslands close to the Uruguayan and Argentinean border lands adapted by newcomers into the scene to the production of export beef and home to a three-country strong cowherder culture.  The Atlantic Forest extends inland towards  Argentina and Paraguay all the way up North bordering the Cerrado Region forming a forest enclave in the Cerrado grasslands.  

Brazilian capitals like Recife, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo with its over 10 million people, Curitiba and Porto Alegre have all been built on land claimed (some say stolen) from the Atlantic Forest. Iguassu / Iguazú Falls, protected by the Iguazú / Iguassu National Parks, both World Natural Heritage Sites is part of what the Atlantic Forest has to offer. So when you travel in most of Brazil your are on lands located on these two types of JUNGLES.

And in those lands Nature created the six big natural regions, called biomes nowadays - Map 3

In between, that is between the Mighty Lovely Amazon and the somehow battered but also gorgeous Atlantic Forest you will see two natural regions that you can't feel ashamed if you never heard of them. They are the CERRADO - a rich, diverse type of Savana or different savana-like types of vegetations and the CAATINGA. The word CAATINGA comes from languages in the Tupian trunk of languages of which today's Paraguayan Guarani is a good representative. Caa (ka'a) means vegetation and "tinga" or  "tĩ" means white in the sense that is formed by a sparse, dry, vegatation covering an arid land.  Both the Cerrado and the Caatinga ((ka'atĩ, in Paraguayan Guarani) are densely inhabited. 

Between the CERRADO and AMAZONIA you will see the dark blue area called  PANTANAL, a huge wetland system in the Paraguay River basin which in places mix Cerrado, Wetland and Atlantic Forest vegetations. 

And each region received a great amount of rivers and life-giving water: the river basins - Map 4 (Compare this map to this)

The Rivers
Map 4 shows the river basins of Brazil. Again the Amazon Jungle area stands out as also being the country's number one river basin. In it you will find huge Amazonian Rivers like the Amazon River itself, the Javari, the Putumayo/Iça, the Caquetá/Japurá, the Meta / Rio Negro, the Juruá and the complex life-giving system of tributaries in the area that floods for six months. Bordering on the Amazon Baisin we have the Paraguay River Basin which flows into the Pantanal Area going down into Paraguay and as far as Argentina where it will meet the Paraná River, the 12th largerst in the world. Very important and still unknown to the majority of Earthians is the green-colored area bordering on the Amazon Basin and flowing into it. It is the Tocantins-Araguaia River Basin. Tocantins is a river of its own as is the Araguaia. This is a very beautiful, dream-like area full of undescribable natural beauties and attractions that we will show you in later more detailed posts. Two other larger basins are the Paraná Basin, pink on the map, that collects water from the lower half of Brazil. 

Brasilia, the Capital of the Country, sits not far from a Biological Reservation called "Águas Emendadas" or Blended Waters. Waters that spring up from the ground merely meters apart will travel to help engross two of the most imortant riverbasins in Suth America: Amazon and Paraná. Iguassu Falls, located 20 kilometers before the Iguazú (Iguaçu, Iguassu) River flows into the Paraná River is a member of this basin.                

Administrative human areas called "states" were created: 26 were created. Brasília the capital in the Cerrado Biome has the status of a state under the name of Distrito Federal (DF) between GO and MG - Map 5

With map 5 we want to give you an Idea of Brazil’s internal divisions as far as states are concerned. There are no names or identifications in the spaces representing the states. That mission will be fulfilled with map 6. All spaces occupied by states have received the abbreviations of their names. Beginning with the all important Amazon JUNGLE biome we have the states of Amazonas (AM), Roraima (RR), Amapá (AP), Pará (PA), Mato Grosso (MT, not totally in the Amazon Area), Rondônia (RO) and Acre (AC). In the Cerrado Savana Area we have states or part of some states in this important ecoregion mainly Tocantins (TO), Goiás (GO), Mato Grosso (MT), Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), also covering parts of Bahia (BA),Minas Gerais (MG), São Paulo (SP) and even Paraná (PR). In the Atlantic Forest Area proper we may include parts of Maranhão (MA),Piauí (PI), Ceará (CE), Rio Grande do Norte (RN), Paraíba (PB), Pernambuco (PE), Alagoas (AL), Sergipe (SE), Bahia (BA), Espirito Santo (ES), Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and happily São Paulo (SP), Paraná (PR),  Santa Catarina (SC) and Rio Grande do Sul (RS). 

Over 1.8 million hectars of preserved Atlantic Forest is to be found along the Rio de Janeiro – Santa Catarina stretch with more important reserves inland in São Paulo and the area between the coastal cities and sea ports of Paranaguá and Antonina, Curitiba (PR) and the Iguassu National Park on the border with Argentina. The Itajaí River Valley in Santa Catarina is also rich in Atlantic Forests preserves. Two things are important to highlight: borders of biomes do not always correspond to latter-day man-drawn state lines. Some travelers assume that traveling in Brazil may be boring because landscapes may be the same for hours. I hope this posts offer a hint to planning your adventures naturally.

And then these states were given names. Two-letter abreviations were adopted to identifiy these states - Map 6

Before you go on to the Political Map, this map will show you the regions the Land of Brazil has been divided into. Map 7  Source

When Brazilians try to understand their country they will possibly think in terms of five regions. North, Northeast, Central West, Southeast and South. The North and Northeast are economically more depressed than the Southeast and South. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are in the Southeast. Curitiba and Porto Alegre are in the South. Salvador, Recife, Maceió are in the Northeast and Manaus,  Belém and Macapá are in the North. We will dive deeper in all these regions in our next posts, videos, trips and expeditions.      

The 27 states house 5.570 municipalities (cities) - Map 7

Now we welcome you to the map of Brazil as it is with all the states, their main cities and other observations. Down to earth matters as airplanes, airports, flight planning, consulates, governments seats are organized according to this map. The state of Paraná, where this blog and blogger live, has 399 cities or municipalities. Politicians have been working very hard trying to prevent the creation of one more city that would reach the tipping point that would be having 400. It is psychological: 399 and is better than 400. The federal government is proposing to cancel the existence of all cities with less than 5,000 thousand inhabitants and try to merge two or more into a larger one. Nobody wants that.  

Finally please note that there is a blue line following the coastline showing the Brazilian 200-mile offshore limit including areas around Brazilian Atlantic Ocean  islands,  The Brazilian Navy calls this area Blue Amazonia. The Island of Fernando de Noronha is present on the wishlist of 9 out of 10 Brazilians.