Day Trips from Brasilia

A 168-m blade of water crashes over black basalt cliffs and throws a cool mist you can feel 200 m away. A paved trail switchbacks to two steel viewpoints and a natural pool at the base. Arrive early and you'll share the roar only with vultures riding thermals overhead.

Cobblestones climb past ochre mansions that once stored gold. Now the town is a weekender hangout framed by the Serra dos Pireneus. Spend the morning drifting along colonial lanes, the afternoon chasing quartz-clear waterfalls, and the late afternoon spooning pequi ice cream under blooming ipê trees.

This 28-thousand-hectare slab of cerrado begins where the city ends. Trails skirt veredas, those palm-lined wetlands, and finish on a 90-m quartzite cliff that stares down Lago Santa Maria. Show up at dawn to catch maned wolves and giant anteaters before the heat drives them underground.

The planet's biggest hydrothermal park sits atop a magma pocket that keeps dozens of pools between 37 °C and 58 °C all year. A day pass lets you hop from artificial lagoons to natural jacuzzis and drift along a lazy river that slides you under palm roofs.

A UNESCO-listed town where Portuguese slavers once weighed gold onto mule trains. Whitewashed churches, stone fountains, and a chocolate shop still grinding cacao on a 19th-century mill survive. The 40-min riverside walk to Boa Vista Chapel is pure Goiás back-country.

Combine a 42-m curtain fall with an underground lake so clear that a guide's torch looks like a laser. Both sit on the same dirt road. You can rinse off under the cascade after spelunk 200 m into the cave.