Brazil offers kaleidoscopic carnivals, some spectacular cities and towns - Rio de janeiro, Salvador and Curitiba for starters, lively friendly people, superb beaches and the massive Iguacu Falls in the south, but naturally many visitors come to Brazil looking for wildlife.
Beware, the Amazon can raise false expectations, especially if a traveller has been to Africa previously and has hundreds of pictures of thousands of wild animals in their albums at home.
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 probably hypertense black mambas. Not forgetting the tarantulas that like to drop onto the insects that will be hovering over your torch beam, of course - and they're sometimes not very accurate, which makes them irritable as hell.
So why go to Brazil's Amazon?
For the ambience, the name, the river/forest views, the chugging life and the epitome of the jungle experiences, that's why. 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...
If you really want to see 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.

Best time to go: April-September; for the Amazon or Pantanal specifically July-October [the dry season].
Worst: December - February [hot, humid and local holidays]

Other South America images: Peru Pictures | Galapagos Pictures | Chile Pictures | Argentina Pictures Brazil Pictures by Julian Loader except where otherwise stated. Amazon sunset [above] by Brasil2.