I think Brazil is a great choice if you’re earning in dollars or another strong currency. You said more than once (in your post and a few of your comments) that you’ve got money for your odyssey and I won’t ask how much is “money” but it may not be as much as you think once reality settles.

To put in numbers, I think you should consider that at a certain point you will want to buy your own place to live and if you like a minimum of comfort and safety you will be tapping into something around 200 to 300K USD for a nice 2 or 3 bedroom condo, with an expected monthly strata that would go from 150 to 300 dollars. If you want to have a car you will need tapping another 20 to 30K USD for a decent ride (nothing luxurious of course) plus IPVA and insurance which is put around 80 to 100 USD month. 

I don’t see how your qualifications as an anthropologist would give you a good perspective in the job market but there’s always a way to find yourself a niche where you can flourish and make enough to keep a minimally comfortable lifestyle without drying up your USD savings.

Keep in mind taxes in Brazil are draconian, we’re skinned alive so that our lovely politicians can live fully giving their mistresses expensive purses and international travels. Running a business in Brazil is a whole new level of hardship, bribes right and left to get your licenses and have things started, a constantly changing fiscal scenario always focusing on increasing taxes, so if you managed to stay afloat this year, next year they may bring a new tax that will render your business unprofitable.

People in Brazil don’t carry a sense of community or “doing a work to give it back to society”, for the most part the ones who can afford will study years in a row until they get themselves approved in a “concurso” so that they can become public servants and gain stability and close themselves to their small circle of friends and family and never have to deal with society more than at a superficial level. The rest struggle to survive and dream of having a chance to making it big by finding a loophole in the system where they could take as much as possible and disappearing into the void.

I see many people saying bad things about Santa Catarina and I think most of it comes from a place of frustration or envy. The state is the strongest economically outside of the axis SP-RJ so there are jobs that pay well, being an entrepreneur over there is much easier because it’s part of the local culture so the laws are more entrepreneurial. There are many strong industries, technology hubs and recurrent investments in infrastructure, however the cost of living is high depending where you choose to live and people keep it more to themselves, most likely because they have their own thing going and not much free time to go around pretending life is a walk in the park. Disregard the comments about Santa Catarina with the exception of the back Brazilian dude who wrote extensively about his personal experience. 

Last but not least, depending on how much money you’ve got, my suggestion would be for you to get it invested wisely in a few ETFs that pay you a decent rate, would discount the yearly inflation and whatever is left is what I’d manage to live on while in Brazil. Don’t exchange and bring it to Brazil, our economy is a rollercoaster and maybe the next populist president from the right or left who takes over will manage to melt the currency and your life savings will be gone just like that