Final Breakdown on Brazil:

Country of Origin: Argentina
Total time in country: 21 days
Music: The Samba! Move your feet as fast as you can! It doesn't really seem to matter if it is to the music or not.
People: Beautiful women might distract you from their boyfriends buying the next round with money from your pocket.
Transport: Buses are expensive, no movies AND NO A/C! What a bunch of crap.
Landscape: Green, lush, tropical paradise, quaint colonial areas, beautiful beaches. Yawn, seen it in other places too. The truly original place... Iguazu Falls
Food: My poorness was evident in my food choice in this country. I can tell you that bake ham and cheese rolls on every street corner get old quickly and it is really hard to find peanut butter.
Safety: Carnival had some obvious security issues as discussed, and the countryside is safe as in most countries, and in the big cities you just need to stay in the safe areas like any major city.
Gas prices: gas - 2.57 Reales/ gallon (5.49 USD/gallon), or the sugar cane ethanol for 3.62 USD/gallon.
Surprised by: How big the country is! Brazil is the next smallest country to the USA, and to think that we took a bus half way through it to get to Salvador, then turned around and went back a quarter of the way back to get to Rio, that is a lot of bus time
Final word: The unexpected gem! I had few expectations going into Brazil besides the pandemonium of Carnival. Carnival came through and so did all the other parts of the country. The countryside was beautiful, the beaches clean, and Rio vivacious. The Portuguese was funky for a couple of days but easy enough with the Spanish background, but this doesn't matter much as everyone there speaks body language.
Next stop: USA via Panama