To really be able to know and understand a foreign culture and it’s people seems to me a task that would take a lifetime to accomplish. Brazil is a vast country of incredible cultural and physical diversity. In the last 3 years I have spent over 6 months living here, and am only just beginning to understand its complexities.

In the midst of my third 28 day Brazil trip, I found myself re-reading a journal entry from a week ago. The contents of which described the beautiful rolling mountains, vast sand dunes, lagoons and pristine Atlantic coastline of Florianopolis in southern Brazil. Wiping sweat from my eyes and swatting a mosquito off my arm, I took a moment to glance up and consider the contrast between where I had been a few days ago and with my present surroundings.

Last night we wrestled a black Cayman from the water in the middle of the night into a dugout canoe. Today we visited a native village, and played soccer on the riverbanks of the Amazon against children from an elementary school set in the middle of the jungle.

Tomorrow we'll be exploring the colonial streets of Salvador, walking to the drum beats that pervade the air of the tiny winding cobblestone streets. The next day might find us horseback riding on a deserted beach on Morro de Sao Paulo, or perhaps a sunset surf at a secret break I stumbled upon three years ago in Itacare.

While you could spend a lifetime exploring Brazil, and still leave missing something, the reality of most of our lives is that wandering the globe endlessly is an impossibility. Which is why for me I think that a 28 day trip is the perfect travel trip. We see more, do more and experience such unique and impressive things that at times it almost becomes overwhelming, this trip is mind blowing in every sense of the expression.

BT’s 28 day Brazil travellers experience things most people will only ever see on television or in magazines, they are able to live in moments so foreign and far away, that most of our imaginations would be challenged to envision them.

Each trip is a new experience for me and the moments that fill every day are always unique.  Its these moments amongst fellow travellers that keep me grinning and stoked to share my love of this country with first-time visitors to Brazil.

~Taylor Aikins, Beach Travellers Brazil guide