BONUS: Adeus, Brasil!

Well, what a surprise packet Brazil turned out to be! It was not at the top of the list of places I was most excited for, but at this stage it is perhaps the place I'd be most likely to come back to. Certainly, many of the highlights of my trip so far have been in Brazil - hiking the waterfalls of Iguazú, spotting jaguar in the Pantanal, and snorkelling with turtles off La Costa Verde, to name a few. They are all experiences I'd love to have again. There are no doubt further adventures awaiting to be had and places to discover in Rio and Sao Paulo too. And I didn't even touch Brazil's main natural attraction - the Amazon basin! It's a country with so much to see and do that even a solid month's visit is not nearly enough.

Indeed, it felt generally like a land of bounty, offering all kinds of riches to residents and visitors alike. It was a very easy place to enjoy as a tourist. It has stunningly diverse natural wonders, from jungles to wetlands to beaches to buzzing cities. It was safe, easy to navigate and cheap. It has large migrant populations, particularly from Europe and Japan, meaning some truly excellent food. And it is fun! You can't walk down the street without someone wanting to make you a cocktail, and those streets are just as likely to turn into dance floors as the day passes, the capirinhas continue to flow, and the samba begins to play. But as much as they love to live life to its fullest, the people seemed very sensible, they followed the rules and knew how to have a good time without it getting out of hand. They want to party, yes, but they also want to be able to do it all again the next day. Where else could you go to the football and the lads go to the bar, not for beers, but for water? Or be waiting to board a train to the F1 and have a police officer(!) on a megaphone geeing UP the energy of the crowd with enthusiastic cheers and pumping music. Not likely back home!

For the locals, I got the sense that there is plenty in Brazil to go around. The country is resource rich and appears to have a very self-contained economy - everything I saw seemed to be made and designed for consumption or use in Brazil. They don't have IKEA, for example, but have their own equivalent enormous warehouses of Brazilian made flat-packs. And you're hard pressed to find anything made in China or India here - there is a Brazilian equivalent for all those usual cheap shoes, sunglasses, clothes etc. It speaks to a lot of opportunities for employment and prosperity for the Brazilian people. Of course, the places I visited and stayed likely did not paint the full picture and I suspect I certainly have not seen the less advantaged side of the county. Although declining rapidly, Brazil has a high rate of poverty. So I hope, for example, that civil policies are in place to help to ensure the country's bounties are shared around and can support the less fortunate. Infrastructure-wise, it certainly seemed like a well-run country, with excellent roads, hugely impressive public transport systems in the cities, and some of the best designed and most efficient airports I've seen. And so clean! With people constantly cleaning and clearing sidewalks, beaches and streets. But I can't speak to the education, health or welfare structures in place - here's hoping they are as well organised. At the very least, it was refreshing to see how corporate profits seemed to filter down to the community, such as how mining companies had drawn on their profits to build impressive and usually free (or at least for Brazilians) museums like the Inhotim Gallery or the Museum of the Future in Rio. And they were getting good use. Indeed, it seemed that Brazilians were generally quite time rich. People were always out and about enjoying life, and many of the other tourists on the beaches or enjoying family getaways in the hills were Brazilians themselves. There did not seem to be much intermingling between Brazil and the rest of the continent, and I encountered even fewer tourists from further afield. Perhaps language is a bit of a barrier - Portuguese is a killer and there is certainly not much English spoken! But that should not deter anyone from visiting this stunning, vibrant and surprising place. I certainly will be back.