Category: Brazil

This cozy town is nestled in the green Serra do Carmo hills, 30km southeast of Palmas, in an area studded with beautiful waterfalls and healthy forest. The state and local tourism boards have dedicated themselves to making Taquaruçu an eco-tourism mecca, with modest success. There’s no local transportation, however, so you’ll need a rental car from Palmas to really enjoy the area’s attractions (some sites even require a 4WD during the rainy season). Weekends and holidays can be quite busy.

Mauá is an utterly idyllic river valley that feels like a world unto itself. Prettier and more tranquil than Penedo, it has rushing streams, tinkling goat bells, cozy chalets and country lanes graced with wildflowers. Its isolation is largely thanks to the town’s limited access routes, all via rutted dirt roads over precipitous mountaintops – however you get here, be ready for a bumpy ride!

Cuiabá is a frontier boomtown basking in the relentless Mato Grosso sun. The town’s name is a Bororo Indian word meaning ‘arrow-fishing, ’ though it was first gold and later agriculture that led to the city becoming one of the fastest-growing capitals in Brazil over the last 30 years. The population explosion has tailed off in recent times, but Cuiabá is still a lively place and a good starting point for excursions to the Pantanal and Chapada dos Guimarães.

Thousands of Belenenses (Belém residents) beat the heat by flocking to Mosqueiro’s 18 freshwater beaches. The area gets particularly crowded on weekends between July and October. The beaches on Ilha de Marajó and the Atlantic coast are nicer overall, but if you just want to get out of Belém for a day or so, Mosqueiro on a weekday is a decent option.

The pleasant little town of Natividade is 230km from Palmas in southeast Tocantins, in a valley beneath the green and wooded Serra Geral. Natividade is Tocantins’ oldest town, founded in 1734. The Portuguese and their African slaves came to the Serra Geral in a minor gold rush in the 1720s, but when the gold gave out they moved down the hill and turned to cattle herding.

Praia do Forte is a pleasant and attractive tourist village that was intentionally developed into an upmarket, somewhat ecologically sensitive beach resort. The main drag (Alameda do Sol) is a pedestrian walkway lined with nice restaurants and boutiques and dotted with trees. It leads to an adorably tiny church, a sea turtle reserve and fantastic, palm-lined beaches with sparkling white sands that fill up on weekends. Surrounding the village are castle ruins, a lagoon for canoeing, and the Sapiranga forest reserve, which has hiking and biking trails and a zip line. If you can, time your visit for the full moon and walk along the beach past the resort at sunset, when the sun turns the waters of the Rio Timeantube red as the moon rises over the sea.

Tefé is the jumping-off point to the Mamirauá reserve, one of the best ecotourism experiences in the Amazon. Visits there are closely coordinated with airline schedules, so those coming and going by plane generally have little or no time to explore the town. Those traveling by boat may have a day or two to spare, which is plenty. It’s not that there is anything wrong – it’s a perfectly safe, agreeable place, just not particularly memorable.

This tidy little town of neat wooden houses along broad streets was home to environmental hero Chico Mendes. It lies about 12km northwest of Hwy BR-317, the main road between Rio Branco (241km away) and Brasiléia (74km away).