The South East: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and the Green Coast

Few places capture South America’s breath-taking natural beauty and vibrant verve like Rio. The Girl from Ipanema oozes from a beachside bars, samba swings in the streets, football-mad crowds roar in the giant Maracanã stadium and carnival captivates even the most jaded. There’s beach volleyball on Copacabana, cable cars rising up the Sugar Loaf and the panoply is embraced by Christ high on Corcovado mountain, bays and forest-swathed boulder-mountains at his feet.

There’s plenty beyond Rio too. There are the gorgeous, forest backed beaches of the Green Coast around Paraty and the lovely, car-free island of Ilha Grande. And the colonial goldmining towns of Minas that rise and fall in beautiful baroque churches and palaces over cobbled streets. There are the table-top mountains of Ibitipoca, where maned wolves wander and the largest and rarest monkey in the Americas swings through the trees, and the giant metropolis of São Paulo where Brazil’s myriad cultures and peoples come together in beguiling urban vastness.