Last year we visited Belem, which is the 11th largest Brazilian city, and did a tour of the river on which it is located which is one of the many tributaries of the Amazon River. We had not been impressed with Belem, so Barry elected to stay aboard the ship as did Mal. Karen had arranged a van, so Max, Leslie, Karen,Tom and Steve went to the city, which is about an hour and twenty minutes from the ship's pier. I am very glad we did this, because I had a better impression than I did last year.
First of all security is extremely heavy here, with military police in full regalia, at our pier, guarding the entry and our ship's personnel. We also saw plenty of police on the streets throughout the day, and at one point the police told Tom to put away his iPad, and Max to hide her camera. Other than that we felt safe, but one is always vigilant.
To put the context of where we were I am going to quote the ship's description of the Amazon River because, until you visit here, it is difficult to appreciate the size of this mighty river.
" The Amazon is a gigantic system of rivers and forests, covering almost half of Brazil and extending into neighbouring countries. The wide stretch of river, known as Rio Amazonas, runs between the cities of Manaus and Belem, though the various rivers that join to form it provide a navigable route for ocean-going vessels to the other side of the South American continent. The forest still keeps many of its secrets; to this day, major tributaries of the Amazon are unexplored. Of the estimated 15,000 species of Amazon creatures, thousands of birds, and fish and hundreds of mammals have not been classified. A cursory sampling of known animal species found in the forest - some common, some rare, some virtually extinct - includes jaguars, tapirs, peccaries, spider monkeys, sloths, armadillos, caimans, alligators, river dolphins, boa constrictors and anacondas. Forest birds include toucans, parrots, macaws, hummingbirds and gaviao (birds of prey). and insect life is well represented, with over 1800 species of butterflies and more than 200 species of mosquito. Fish such as piranha, tucunare, piraracu, anuana, piraibba and poraque (electric eel) abound in such amazing diversity of species that biologists are unable to identify much of the catch found in Belem's markets. Don't expect to meet remote Indian tribes or dozens of free-ranging beasts though , because in both cases contact has been synonymous with destruction and both have sensibly fled from accessible areas. "
The humidity here is such that your own perspiration quite literally is running down your back like a river all the time, and your hair is wet with the slightest exertion. For those of us walking, 4 hours left us all drained. However what an interesting 4 hours we spent walking through the markets. I didn't have a camera as we were nervous of theft, but Maxine did take the photos we are posting today.
We saw fruit that we had never seen, fish, beautiful vegetables, and cages and cages of live ducks, macaws, bunnies, guinea pigs, chickens, chicks, budgies, and geese. The goods were not a high quality and for a bunch of experienced world shoppers, it is rare that someone doesn't buy something, but all that tempted us were soccer shirts. Soccer of course is a national Brazilian passion and there were many many stalls of soccer gear. One of the most interesting shops was the medicinal herbal shop. Many of our modern medicines are derived from Amazon plants and here, there were great bunches of dried herbs and huge baskets of them. The smells were also wonderful. There were also spice sellers but none that had our needed vacuum packed packages.
The big find for me was Chinese laundry bags which are giant plastic plaid bags with zippers that I can use to put our various purchases in for the trip home in our car!
We visited the main cathedral, which is stunning inside.
Thanks to Tom and Steve for these Belem pictures.
Belem itself is a mix of immense poverty, with lots of slums, but situated side by side with new mega developments with 40 story condo buildings that would look at home in LA. or Miami. We saw several gated communities, and some large new shopping centres, and noted that all the new developments have razor wire, or other security features as crime is rampant here and the divide between the very wealthy and the very poor is great. Brazil is slowly pulling itself into the modern world, and frankly there are more cranes here than we see in North America.
The heat is so tremendous, and life must be extremely hard for the poor because of it, as the transportation is by bus in the vastly populated city.
One last note, Belem is 80 miles up the river from the ocean, and we would pass out of the river at 1 a.m. on Wednesday, and 12 hours later, by 1 pm. on Wednesday the Atlantic Ocean was still brown with the silt of this mighty river that colours the Atlantic mud brown sea for over 200 miles, with its nutrients. Until you see it you can not imagine!
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