Brazil's geographic heart — a sandstone plateau 800m above the Pantanal, spectacular canyon waterfalls, and the geodetic centre of South America
Chapada dos Guimarães is a municipality in Mato Grosso state — the access point for a sandstone plateau (chapada) rising abruptly 800m above the surrounding lowlands. The national park contains Brazil's most photographed waterfall (Véu de Noiva, 86m), a geological formation marking the geodetic centre of South America, and dramatic canyon landscapes cut by rivers into Paleozoic sandstone. The plateau ecology is cerrado (Brazilian savannah) — one of the world's biodiversity hotspots — with endemic species and dramatic seasonal wildflowers.
The Chapada dos Guimarães area was a significant colonial transit point — Cuiabá, the Mato Grosso capital 68km south, was founded in 1719 on gold deposits, and the Chapada served as the administrative hub for the surrounding fazenda economy during the 18th–19th centuries. The Baroque Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Santana (1779) in Chapada town is the oldest church in Mato Grosso. The determination of South America's geodetic centre was a Brazilian government IBGE surveying project of the 1990s — the marker near Morro São Jerônimo is a small monument but a genuine geographic claim.