Brazil, South America's largest country, offers the curious tourist kaleidoscopic carnivals, some spectacular cities and towns - Rio de janeiro, Salvador and Curitiba for starters, lively friendly people, superb beaches and the massive Iguaçu Falls in the south, but naturally many visitors come to Brazil looking for wildlife.

Beware, the Amazon can raise false expectations, this is not an African wildlife experience with teeming herds of animals.
Tourists should go there for the ambience, the history, the river and rainforest views, the chugging life and the epitome of the jungle experience. Forget animal head counts, go to feel, hear and see the world's greatest rainforest in all its monstrous, sweaty, buzzing, uncomfortable glory. While it lasts...

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An Amazon River tributary, with local village.
Photo by Jim

Amazon River photos >>>

A hungry Amazonian tarantula in north Brazil.
Photo by Jim

Amazon Rainforest photos >>>

The Amazon Basin vegetation is so dense that you'd be lucky to see an anteater at ten paces, even if it ventured out in the daytime.
But most Amazon creatures hunt at night, and that's not an especially good time for nervous tourists to be thrusting their way through dark, dense undergrowth, accompanied by squadrons of thirsty mosquitoes, spooky noises and slithering things that are possibly hyper tense black mambas.
Not forgetting the tarantulas that like to drop onto the insects that will be hovering over your torch beam or dinner candle - and they're sometimes not very accurate, which makes them irritable.

We exaggerate of course. You can find interesting little animals and birds in the rainforest, but you really need a good, knowledgeable guide with great eyesight!

If you really want to see clear cut Brazilian wildlife consider heading for The Pantanal further south instead. We have no experience of this massive swampland but some visitors say it's the bees knees.

Iguaçu Falls in south Brasil.
Photo by SFBrit

Iguaçu Falls photos >>>

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Weather

The best time to go to coastal areas is from April-September but for the Amazon or Pantanal it's best from July-October, the dry season.
Worst: December - February (hot, humid and local holidays)

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Photos: Rio de Janeiro | Manaus | Iguazu | Amazon River | Amazon Rainforest

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