The country of Brazil is the fifth largest on the Earth – which not many people are aware of. The country is divided up into several regions for administrative purposes, each containing states and cities within them. While some are identified by their state’s borders, other regions rely on natural, cultural or even economic borders to help distinguish them. The Northern region is defined mostly by its unique geography and native Indian peoples. Though the rest of Brazil is home to some of the most cosmopolitan and world renown cities in the world, its Northern region is best known as the home to the Amazon forest.

While all of northern Brazil is not covered in the rain forests of the Amazonas state, the area does contain critical conservation areas that are home to over two and half million species of insects, thousands of plant forms, two thousand types of fish, over nine hundred kinds of birds, and approximately two hundred known mammals. The area is also the home to approximately two hundred thousand native Indians who have inhabited the forests for eons.

The capital city of the Amazonas state is a remarkable destination from which to begin any kind of trek into the Amazon forest. Manaus was home to the rubber industry in the late 1800s, and the wealth of the merchants was poured into the city’s development. Today there are monuments of the era everywhere – the Mercado Municipal is a copy of the Les Halles market of Paris, the Rio Palacio Negro imitates many famous Portuguese architectural facades and the Teatro Amazonas is an exact copy of the Grand Opera in Paris.

Manaus is the starting point for another common destination in the Northern region of Brazil – the city of Parintins, known for its Boi Bumba festival celebrating the Amazonian culture. The Parintins Festival or the Boi Bumba festival is marked by a reenactment of an ancient dispute between the Bumbas peoples. The annual event is second in popularity only to the Carnival festivals elsewhere in the country. There are parades with floats, performances, musical events and over thirty five thousand people who travel to the tiny island to participate.