The Southeast Region

There are four states in the Southeast Region: Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo!

For many visitors, the southeast is the natural gateway to Brazil, being home to the country’s two busiest international airports and domestic hubs, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Few first-time visitors to Brazil miss the opportunity to visit Rio de Janeiro, although São Paulo is by far the most important business and financial centre in South America and, therefore, a natural destination for business executives looking to expand their influence and activities in Brazil and the region.

Rio de Janeiro

Whatever the expectations, most visitors find Rio de Janeiro to be more awe-inspiring and vibrant than words, photos or even videos can do justice.

Rio is both a major cosmopolitan city and a tropical resort. As a major city, it has all you might expect! First-class restaurants, sophisticated night clubs, fashionable bars, musical extravaganzas, theatres, cinemas, museums, art galleries, world-class sport, designer stores and stylish shopping centres.

As a resort, Rio has miles of golden beaches, great weather for most of the year, accommodation to appeal to every taste and budget, folklore, typical foods and music, sightseeing, and that satisfying feeling that you have really travelled.

None of this even considers the city’s overall beauty, the beauty that has made Rio globally famous and a much sought-after destination.

It is the mountains and sea that have given the world’s largest tropical city its beauty, and it is these same topographical features that have dictated how Rio has spread out along the coast and inland since being discovered by the Portuguese in the early 16 century.

Many of Rio’s attractions have links to the mountains and sea and are household names, and not just in Brazil. There is Corcovado Mountain and the statue of Christ the Redeemer, considered one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World, from where visitors can look down on Sugar Loaf Mountain, another global landmark, and the Bay of Rio, a bay so large that the first explorers assumed that it was the mouth of a great river and called it River of January, or Rio de Janeiro.

The beaches are equally well known, from Copacabana to Ipanema, while in-between are suburbs whose names are synonymous with the city’s leading football teams, clubs such as Flamengo and Botafogo.

The big football games are still played at the Maracanã Stadium, which, when it opened for the 1950 World Cup, could handle crowds in excess of 200,000. Sixty years later, the stadium is still one of the world’s largest and has hosted the 2014 World Cup Final, and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2016 Olympics.

Rio is also a cultural city, being the birthplace of both Bossa Nova and Samba, and its musicians remain at the forefront of Brazilian musical trends. The country’s leading TV network, Globo, is based in Rio, as is much of the country’s film industry and South America’s main film festival. The city’s Carnival is the world’s biggest and most famous, while the New Year’s Eve celebrations on Copacabana Beach are some of the most spectacular.