Brazil vacations

The Pantanal is almost 17 million hectares of wild wetlands, rivers, lakes and forest that sink under floods every wet season. You’ll follow in the footsteps of the wildlife and rise above the waters on canoe and boat trips skippered by a local guide. You’ll need their expertise to seek out the crocs, tapirs, anacondas, capybaras and giant anteaters that hide away – and you’ve got a better chance of seeing wildlife here compared to the tangled Amazon Rainforest. It’s not all sunken waterways, either. The dusty Transpantaneira Highway bumps through the northern Pantanal, where you’re most likely to see jaguars.

Rio de Janeiro is hard to pin down: it’s a city where favelas wobble down hillsides overlooking million-dollar yachts and beaches. Even outside Carnival, a medley of samba, hip-hop, bossa nova and Carioca funk drifts out of houses and cafés. Gawp at the spectacular views from Christ the Redeemer, play volleyball and eat barbecue on the beach, explore Rio Botanical Garden, but also join a city tour by a resident who can reveal some of the truths of living in a city with such an astonishing gulf between the rich and poor.

Traveling in Brazil with kids is easy when you go with a vacation company that knows how to source just the right accommodation and activities, and tweak journey times to your brood’s ability to sit still. Brazil doesn’t have a boring bone in its body, so you might zipline through rainforests, track jaguars, monkeys and toucans by boat, stare wide-eyed at waterfalls, and join Brazilian families as they pile onto beaches made for barbecuing and snorkelling. Even cities are an adventure playground, with a cable car hoisting you up Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro and interactive science museums like the Museu Catavento in Sao Paulo.