Chapada dos Veadeiros

Quartz country 1.8 billion years old, with waterfalls off the edge of it

Chapada dos Veadeiros is a high plateau in the state of Goiás in central Brazil, the highest plain in the region, between 600 and 1,650 metres above the sea, and its rock is among the oldest on Earth: the plateau has an estimated age of 1.8 billion years. Quartz breaks the surface in outcrops of crystal across the grassland, and for decades the crystals were exported to Japan and England for industrial use. The highest point, the Serra da Santana at 1,691 metres, is also the roof of Goiás.

The plateau is cut by rivers and canyons, with canyon walls up to 40 metres high, and above all it is a country of waterfalls. The Rio Preto, a tributary of the Tocantins, is the park's main river, and its falls drop about 120 metres; along with the Cariocas Falls, the Corredeiras, the Carioquinhas and the Jardim de Maitréya, the park holds a string of falls between 80 and 120 metres high, with dozens more on surrounding properties, from the Vale da Lua to the Poço Encantado.

People first came for gold. The region opened in the 18th-century gold rush, and Cavalcante, one of its first villages, became for a time one of Brazil's major gold producers; some say Princess Isabel visited, making it the empire's capital for a day. The mines ran on enslaved labour, and today the region holds some of the largest quilombo communities in Brazil, founded by people who escaped slavery. Among them are the Kalunga, whose name once meant something of little value and is now a word of pride. When the gold gave out, the villages were left isolated, and in time they were rediscovered, with tourism now helping to support the Kalunga communities.

President Juscelino Kubitschek created the national park on 11 January 1961. It now covers 2,405 square kilometres in the municipalities of Alto Paraíso de Goiás, Cavalcante and Colinas do Sul, run by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. Its real treasure is the cerrado, one of the oldest and most diverse tropical ecosystems in the world, with 350 to 400 species of vascular plants in a single hectare. Through millennia of climate swings it has been a refuge for rare and endemic species, and it still shelters pampas and marsh deer, maned wolves, jaguars, giant armadillos and anteaters, tapirs, rheas and king vultures. In 2001 UNESCO inscribed it, together with Emas National Park, as the Cerrado Protected Areas World Heritage Site.