| North Brazil Vacations and Luxury Travel Packages |
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Endangered Paradise or Green Hell?
Northern Brazil has a population of only 3.6 million, but accounts for 42 percent of the country's land area. This extensive Regido Norte stretches from latitude 13°S to 5°N, encompassing seven states: Tocantins, Para, Amapa, Roraima, Amazonas, Rondonia and Acre. The region is so large it contains three time zones: there is a two-hour difference between Belem, the capital city of Para, and Rio Branco, the capital of Acre. The north is Brazil's least populous region: in an area roughly half the size of the contiguous United States live only about 10 million people, or six percent of Brazil's total population. The region's contribution to the gross domestic product can likewise be expressed in single digits, despite its wood exports, extensive mineral resources, gold deposits, and the industrial zone near Manaus.
The 7.2-million-square-kilometer drainage area of the Amazon extends beyond Brazil into Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Ecuador. The origin of the name of the world's largest river system is a matter of some dispute, although it is widely believed that it stems from a Greek myth: The Amazons, heroic female warriors, had one of their breasts removed so that they could shoot more easily with bow and arrow. When he came to Ecuador in 1542 with 60 men in pursuit of the legendary golden city of El Dorado, Francisco Orellana, the Spaniard credited with discovering the Amazon, had such a strong desire to meet such women in the flesh that he wrote of encounters with "tall, fair-skinned women who fight like ten men." Another less dramatic, but plausible explanation for the name of the river and region is the Indian word amaVunu, which means "water-clouds-noise." |
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