The Monkey's travels took him to the Chapadas da Guimaraes, a geological anamoly in the plains and wetlands of western Brasil. There, he witnessed the cliffs and canyons, the waterfalls and forests, and the bizarre natural phenomena (like cars left in neutral seemingly rolling uphill) that make this a special place in Brasil.
It's a true shame the Monkey didn't pose with the caiman, capybaras, anacondas, and countless bird species of the nearby Pantanal, a France-sized wetlands in the west of Brasil. Next time, when the Monkey visits his friends in Cuiabá, he'll do better on the photographic front.
In the lower left corner of this photo you can see the dry, red earth that was all there was to Brasilia as late as 1960. Three years later, Rio de Janeiro ceded control of Brasil's government to a new and utterly modern, purpose-built capital, Brasilia. The city was the culmination of Brasil's longstanding desire to relocate its federal government to an autonomous region that would be less beholden to the economic and political influences of already exisiting centers like Rio and São Paulo. In this regard, it was not dissimiliar to the creation of Washington and its surrounding District of Columbia in the United States.
But while 1800s-designed Washington consisted of grandiose neoclassical buildings that looked longingly backward to the glory of ancient Rome, 1960s-designed Brasilia was self-consciously modern and proudly displayed Brasil's aspiration to be a vital, modern republic. In aerial views and on blueprints, the city looked like a bird in flight, with the governnment ministries, the tall H-block Congress, and the other state buildings visible here in the distance behind the Monkey as the head, a cross-axis of residential and commercial districts fanning out in the shape of a partial crescent forming the wings, and a long, ceremonial avenue (passing below the Monkey in this photo; he's where the wings meet the body) completing the bird pattern as the body and tail. Residents lived in numbered "super-blocos" rather than on streets, shops were confined to cordoned commercial nodes, and the distances along the avenues leading to the ministries were deceptively longer than they appear at first glance.
To many, it was all a bit "unnatural". The heat of the central Brasilian plains also added to the stifling atmosphere. Politicians routinely commuted to Brasilia for the work week, returning to livelier places on weekends. Still, the capital is possessed of a bold and unique design, and it's not nearly as dull as Rio's Cariocas and São Paulo's Paulistanas, among others, make it out to be. And when the monumental avenues leading toward the Congress fill with demonstrators, it resembles the Mall in Washington, D.C. during the civil rights marches of the 1960s, an appropriate parallel for a multiracial society like Brasil's that continues, like the United States, to struggle with issues of social and racial equality.
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