3 fascinating World Cup cities in Brazil

Manaus, Brazil: All 12 Brazilian cities hosting World Cup games have their claims to fame. Here are three that, for one reason or another, particularly caught our eye. Manaus Welcome to Manaus. Of all places visited by the World Cup in 84 years of traveling the globe, the Amazon city is arguably the most wild and wacky, a new frontier for football's showcase.Manaus is built along the Negro's north bank. Take a boat downriver to admire the "meeting of waters," a natural wonder where the Negro and the River Solimoes come together to form the Amazon. Manaus has nearly six times more homicides -- 600 this year alone -- than London, a city four times its size. Butterflies here are as big as an adult's hand. Shops stocked with the things one needs for jungle living sell fishing hooks the size of coat hooks to catch Amazonian fish as big as cats. Haggle in the market for souvenir piranhas, preserved and mounted, mouths agape to show off those famous teeth. Above the city of 2.2 million people, vultures circle in the thermals. Manaus is the most remote of Brazil's World Cup cities. The others are at least 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) distant. Porto Alegre, in the far south, is a 4-hour, 3,230-kilometer (2,000-mile) flight. England and Italy will be the first of eight teams to sweat and perhaps wilt in the heat and humidity of the Arena Amazonia, with its lattice roof of diamond panels that look like snake scales and 44,000 seats in the colors of tropical fruits. Also playing here are Cameroon-Croatia, the United States-Portugal and Honduras-Switzerland.Porto Alegre There's a joke in Brazil that the No. 1 sport is volleyball -- because football isn't a sport, but a religion. In which case, is perhaps the Brazilian football equivalent of the Vatican or the Potala Palace. The most southern of the 12 World Cup venues has two major teams -- Gremio and Internacional -- and their cross-town rivalry is the most intense in all Brazil. Internacional vice-president Diana de Oliveira says, apparently in all seriousness, that she never writes in blue pen, because blue is Gremio's color. The idea that she could have children who would support Gremio is unthinkable. Her husband is an Internacional supporter, although she says that's not the only reason she married him. he city of 1.4 million people is hosting four group games -- France-Honduras, Netherlands-Australia, South Korea-Algeria, Argentina-Nigeria -- as well as the last 16 knockout game between the winner of Group G, likely to be Germany, and the runner-up from Group H. All matches are at Internacional's newly refurbished Beira-Rio stadium, which of course has red seats. Keeping things fair, teams will train across town at Gremio's arena, which -- you guessed it -- has blue seats.Natal Thanks to American GIs, "Natal was the first place in Brazil to wear jeans, chew chewing gum and wear Ray-Bans," says Mayor Carlos Eduardo Nunes Alves. Quite a coincidence, then, that the U.S. team will play one of its World Cup group games in the Atlantic coast city. Watching Brazilians turn a day at the beach into art, surfing the warm waves and frolicking in the sun, it's now hard to imagine how important Natal was to the war effort. Its Parnamirim field became the largest U.S. air base outside the United States, a "Trampoline to Victory" for troops and supplies heading for combat in Africa, Europe or Asia. The city has a "Miami beach," a name which local tour guides say was left behind by GIs who used to bathe there. The mayor was skeptical of that claim. But "a lot of Americans married women from here," he said. During the World Cup, his City Hall plans to commemorate the American connection by making postcards of a photo taken when Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Getulio Vargas of Brazil met in Natal in January 1943 to cement their nations' wartime cooperation. The United States plays Ghana at the Arena Das Dunas, an airy bowl naturally cooled by sea breezes, with white roof arches reminiscent of wind-sculptured sand dunes and 42,000 seats in the light and dark blues of the Atlantic. Other games are Mexico-Cameroon, Japan-Greece and Italy-Uruguay.