The 11 Best Travel Experiences in Brazil

Rio de Janeiro's Carnival is the largest and most famous in the world, headlined by Sambadrome parades where the city's top samba schools compete through the night in elaborate feathered costumes and floats years in the making.

Beyond the Sambadrome, hundreds of free street parties called blocos take over neighbourhoods for days, open to anyone who wants to dance along.

The Brazilian side of Iguaçu Falls trades Argentina's up-close catwalks for one long panoramic circuit, sweeping across nearly the entire 2.

7km curtain of over 250 individual falls at once.

A short walkway leads out to a platform inside the spray of the Devil's Throat, with boat trips for those who want to get soaked.

It's compact enough to see in half a day, unlike the sprawling park across the border.

Tucked beneath sheer cliffs on Fernando de Noronha and reachable only by a steep ladder cut into the rock (or by boat), this beach has topped "world's best beach" rankings for good reason.

Turquoise water, sea turtles visible from the shore, and a protected marine park setting mean it stays close to pristine.

The remoteness that makes it special also caps how many people can visit each day.

Christ the Redeemer spreads its arms 38 metres wide above Rio from the 700-metre summit of Corcovado, and no statue on Earth has a better backdrop: Sugarloaf, Guanabara Bay and miles of beach-fringed city far below.

The Art Deco figure is impressive up close, but it's the view, in both directions, that makes the trip unmissable.

A volcanic archipelago 350km off Brazil's coast, this is regularly ranked among the world's best beaches, with clear water that reveals reef sharks and sea turtles from the shoreline.

A strict daily visitor cap and environmental tax keep the beaches close to empty even in high season.

Morro Dois Irmaos, twin volcanic peaks rising from the sea, anchor the view from almost every beach.

A two-stage cable car, the bondinho, carries visitors from Praia Vermelha up over the forested Morro da Urca to the bare granite summit of Pão de Açúcar, 396 metres above Guanabara Bay.

From the top, Rio unfolds in full: Copacabana's curve, Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado, and the bay's scattering of islands.

It's one stop, one ride, and one of the most complete views of the city available anywhere.

Launched in 1985 with what was then the largest concert audience ever assembled, Rock in Rio built a purpose-designed City of Rock venue, spread across multiple stages, a Ferris wheel, and a full mock street of bars and food stalls.

The lineup leans toward major international rock and pop headliners, and the festival has since spread to spin-off editions in Lisbon and Madrid.

Despite the name, this isn't a desert: seasonal rains fill the valleys between hundreds of square kilometres of white dunes with clear turquoise lagoons, usually June to September.

Outside that window, the dunes stretch out bone-dry and empty.

Reaching the interior means a 4x4 or a walk across shifting sand from the gateway town of Barreirinhas, but the landscape has no real equivalent on the Brazilian coast.

The world's largest tropical wetland, a mosaic of rivers, lagoons, and gallery forest holding the highest concentration of jaguars, caimans, capybaras, and macaws anywhere in South America.

Guided boat and jeep safaris reveal wildlife far more reliably than the denser Amazon rainforest.

Oscar Niemeyer's hyperboloid of sixteen concrete columns, opened in 1970, that reads from outside as a crown and from inside as a sky of blue and green glass.

Visitors descend a dark ramp and emerge under the light, a sequence Niemeyer designed deliberately.

Three bronze angels hang suspended from the roof above the nave.

On the Belem waterfront where the Amazon meets the Guajara Bay, Ver-o-Peso has traded since the 17th century and remains South America's largest open-air market, its stalls piled with Amazonian fruit few outsiders can name, medicinal herbs, and fish hauled off boats at the adjoining cast-iron fish market pavilion.

The name means 'see the weight'.