Alcântara – which Atlas and I toured one day, after a 90 minute catamaran sail from São Luis – is one of the most curious enigmas (of many) in Brazil. Like the country, it contains both the very old and the very (even overly) new. “Alcântara, built with the sugar […]
São Luis, MA (Maranhão), is located on Brazil’s remote northern coast. The roads are so poor for most of the northern coast that tourists never drive there, only fly. After the slow and rocky ferry crossing, Atlas and I arrived past nine o’clock and still found ourselves eighteen kilometers from […]
Chapter 19 of To Belém & Back describes a fascinating encounter one night in a remote part of the Amazon. While no batuque was currently planned, Dona Fatima implied that it was for lack of “materials,” the righting of which could motivate a gathering that very night. So I immediately […]
“It was high time to take Atlas on another adventure, something on the order of Bananal Island, and it didn’t take long to settle on just such an opportunity, another isle no less. Belém sits across from Isla de Marajó, the largest delta island in the world, bigger than Switzerland. […]
Inhotim, a major contemporary art complex in the midst of extensive botanic gardens, is less than an hour from Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais. Here are shots previously unpublished, from 2013-2015 when taking photographs was not yet encouraged in the galleries. Inhotim is a wonder to behold, alone […]
Upon leaving Dona Romana and her home of cataclysmic faith in central Tocantins, the final push to Brazil’s northernmost parts entered a most precarious phase. There was only one road north now, the infamously decrepit and dangerous Belém-Brasília, “about which the Quatro Rodas listing for Paraiso de Tocantins warns ‘avoid […]
Bananal Island is the largest fluvial island in the world, with a violent history. Only several years before our visit, the local Javaés Indians had ransacked and taken over the park occupying the northern third of the island (on the Araguaia River, a massive Amazon tributary) they did not already […]
Several hours north of Brasília is one of Brazil’s best run national parks, where I spent an otherworldly long weekend. “I have a a theory that many of Brazil’s best kept secrets – such as Worm Farm Inn – are at the end of a long dirt road…. So it […]
Inhotim, a contemporary art complex with 22 galleries and dozens of sculptures among 1 million sq. meters of botanic gardens, is world-class, alone justifying a visit to Minas Gerais. I returned, as a birthday present, on a free Wednesday, when there are more people interacting with the art. [please hover over […]
“Due, maybe, to the fatalistic roads or to the shimmering quality of light in the high, semi-dry savanna of Central Brazil, we were quickly entering a mystic nation within a nation. The first premonitions were in Pirenópolis, another historic gold-boom town like Goiás Velho, only more spiritual.” – To Belém […]
