Northeast Brazil Vacations and Luxury Travel Packages
The nine states that comprise this large region all have Atlantic beaches as well as capital cities that double as ports, the only riverine harbor among them being Teresina, which is the capital of the Brazilian state of Piaui. Because Salvador da Bahia, Recife and Fortaleza enjoy good reputations in the tourist industry, they are popular charter-flight destinations. But relatively small Sergipe and Alagoas are as little known as Maranhao, the northernmost of the nine states, which is nearly as large as Germany.
Of the 30 percent or so of Brazil's population that lives in this region (which occupies a fifth of the country's land mass), over half live in poverty; for this region bears the stamp of sugar-cane production and the slavery that accompanied it. Here the structures of colonial society are largely intact. The yearning of these impoverished Nordestinos to escape drought, hunger and misery has transformed vast numbers of them into cheap and willing workers in the metropolises of Sao Paulo, Rio and Belo Horizonte.
The region can be divided into four geographical zones. The 150-kilometerwide strip that runs along the coast and which was once covered with lush tropical forests is known as Zona da Mata. Brazil's colonial masters cut down these forests, first to export the brazilwood they found there, and later to create arable land for sugar-cane production, which was followed by cocoa, cotton, tobacco and beans. The most populous cities are in this zone, making it the most densely populated in the region.
Agreste, gateway to the Sertao, is primarily given over to cattle raising, although with over 1,000 mm of precipitation per year, plantation-style farming still generates large profits.
The famed (and notorious) Sertao accounts for half of the land area in the northeast. Irregular precipitation and sometimes catastrophic droughts are an integral part of life in this region. Due to the fact that moisture is wrung from the eastern trade winds as they pass over the coastal mountains, and because both runoff and evaporation levels are high, the area has a semi-arid climate, with as little as 300 mm of precipitation in some years. The indigenous peoples call the native vegetation caatinga (white forest) since the bushes, cacti and small trees, brown during dry periods, transfor themselves into a blossoming white and green oasis after the heavy, albeit infrequent, downpours to which the Sertao is prone.
The Meio-Norte, which occupies over one-quarter of the land area in the northeast region, is blessed with abundant precipitation that provides relatively favorable conditions for farming and cattle raising. However, ever since the arrival of the first settlers, most of this land has been concentrated in the hands of a small group of landowners.
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