Welcome to the biggest of Portugal's excolonies - Brazil. It is famous for having those long straight roads in the middle of nowhere. If you are lucky, you can find a roadnumer on a kilometermarker. And if you are even more lucky, you found one of the precious and insanely helpful areacodes. Next to knowing cyrillic, this is probably one of the most important things to know as a Geoguessr player. Good luck trying to master Brazil!
Subdivisions
Brazil is divided into 26 states, plus one Distrito Federal (Federal District):
Phone Codes
Phone codes in Brazil are organized by geographic region, mostly following state boundaries:
São Paulo 1x
- São Paulo (city)
- Eastern Coast
- Western Coast
- Southwest
- South
- North
- Northwest
- West
- Northeast
Rio de Janeiro & Espirito Santo 2x
- Rio de Janeiro (city)
- Eastern Rio de Janeiro
- N/A
- Western Rio de Janeiro
- N/A
- N/A
- Northern Espirito Santo
- Southern Espirito Santo
Minas Gerais 3x
- East / Belo Horizonte
- South
- Northeast
- West
- Southwest
- N/A
- Central
- North
South 4x
(Santa Catarina, Paraná)
- Eastern Paraná / Curitiba
- Central Paraná
- Northern Paraná
- Northwestern Paraná
- Western Paraná
- Southwestern Paraná
- Northeastern Santa Catarina
- Southeastern Santa Catarina
- Western Santa Catarina
Rio Grande do Sul 5x
- East
- N/A
- South
- North
- West
West 6x
(Acre, Rondônia, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantins, Goiás, Distrito Federal)
- Distrito Federal and surrounding areas
- Northern Goiás
- Tocantins
- Southern Goiás
- Southwestern Mato Grosso
- Northern and Eastern Mato Grosso
- Mato Grosso do Sul
- Acre
- Rondônia
East 7x
(Bahia, Sergipe)
- Salvador
- N/A
- Southern Coast
- North
- Northeast
- N/A
- West
- N/A
- Sergipe
Northeast 8x
(Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas)
- Eastern Pernambuco / Recife
- Alagoas
- Paraíba
- Rio Grande do Norte
- Northern Ceará / Fortaleza
- Northern Piauí
- Pernambuco
- Ceará
- Southern Piauí
North 9x
(Amazonas, Pará, Amapá, Roraima, Maranhão)
- Eastern Pará / Belém
- Eastern Amazonas / Manaus
- Western Pará / Santarém
- Southern Pará
- Roraima
- Amapá
- Western Amazonas
- Northern Maranhão
- Southern Maranhão
In most cases, the first two or three codes for the region correspond to the two or three largest cities in the region, respectively. With this map by Harrier you can learn them nice and easy: Area Codes
Traffic
Signage
One of the best giveaways for Brazil is the black sign backs (see image). This, combined with the yellow road lines is an almost guaranteed Brazil plonk.
Priority & General Signage
Brazilian signage largely follows the US-standard specification, with text in Portuguese. This includes diamond-shaped warning signs, octagonal stop signs, and triangular yield signs. The exception is speed limit signs, which are circular.
| Purpose | Sign |
|---|---|
| Stop |  |
| Yield |  |
| Pedestrians |  |
| Zebra Crossing |  |
| Speed Limit |  |
| Bend/Curve |  |
Chevrons
Route Markers
Direction Signs
Bollards and poles
Brazil uses mostly 2 kinds of poles:
- The classic 'ladder poles' found all over Brazil.
- Big, round poles found generally around São Paulo
Bollards are an uncommon sight in South America. If you see any, you are more likely to be in Ecuador or even Peru.
Road Markings
License Plates
From 2018 onwards, Brazil has switched to using new Mercosur license plates:
Highways & Road Numbering Schemes
Vehicles
Geography
A gigantic country like Brazil has tons of different landscapes. Landscape guessing is one of the harder things to do in Brazil. Here are some tips:
Vegetation
The most famous plant of Brazil is probably the Parana-pine. It is mostly found in and around Parana.
Tocantins and Mato Grosso are famous for having red dirt. But be careful, thereare many exceptions.
In the north-west, starting from Minas Gerais going north, you can find a lot of these shrubs. Be careful, in summer-coverage they may look differently becuase of the leaves.
In the Amazon rainforest you can find classic examples of tropical plants. They often look similar to Ecuador, Colombia and Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Relief
The relief is actually quite helpful in Brazil. As you can see on the map, mountains are usually a more coastal thing.
Architecture
Houses on stilts are often found in Acre and Rondonia.
In the north, especially in Maranhão the houses are strongly influenced by the Portuguese settlers. They often have tiled roofs and white facades.
Language
Portuguese is the primary language used in Brazil, and is linguistically closest to Spanish, the predominant language in the rest of South and Central America. It is characterized by its frequent use of the letters H and Ç as compared to Spanish, as well as tilde (~) diacritics. Also you often see the letters 'nh' combinated. The word 'e' means 'and' which is different from the Spanish 'y'
Script
Portuguese uses the 26 standard letters of the Latin alphabet, five diacritics, and has seven common digraphs:
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii
Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr
Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Diacritics
Áá Éé Íí Óó Úú Àà
Ââ Êê Ôô Ãã Õõ Çç
Digraphs
ch lh nh rr ss qu gu
Sample
Todos os seres humanos nascem livres e iguais em dignidade e em direitos. Dotados de razão e de consciência, devem agir uns para com os outros em espírito de fraternidade.
Miscellaneous
Brands
Population Density
Place Names
Satellite Dishes
Wildfires
Meta-Gaming
Street View Coverage
Google Car
Anything specifically related to Street View goes here, including coverage, Google car, rifts, etc.