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Published: February 26th 2014
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Day 18 – Belem
Friday – Feb. 21/14 – Belem
Today we made our first stop on the Amazon River at Belem also known as the “City of the Mango Tree” or Cidade das Mangueiria. More stops on this mighty river will come later in the voyage.
Belem itself lies on the southern channel of the Amazon delta near the Guama River. This area is heavily influenced by the tides, which reach 120 kilometers inland and have a total height of 3 to 4 meters . As a result of the tidal bore and the fact that the ship was scheduled to leave when the river would be moving towards low tide the ship actually stopped in the middle of the river across from Icoaraci. This town is approximately 20 kilometers downstream from Belem.
Holland America Line contracted local vessels to provide the tender service from ship to shore and return. The physical condition of the boats used for the exercise left a lot to be desired and could have
been substitutes for the “Jungle Queen” in Bogart’s movie. They were well used and slow as all get out. The ship was not anchored that far from shore but the boats took their sweet merry time getting to shore. Once on shore we boarded large tour busses for our 45 minute drive into Belem.
Today we once again opted to do two different tours based on the degree of difficulty set out in the Shore Excursion program. Brooke’s tour – the Belem Highlights had a “single person” degree of difficulty while mine the “Amazon River System Adventures by Riverboat” was rated as a “three person” degree of difficulty.
Brooke’s tour started out on the very first tender ashore at 8:00 am while I followed 45 minutes later.
After her drive into the city the tour started out at the Mercado Ver-o-Peso or “Check-the-weight” Market the largest open-air market in Brazil, which was established in 1688. The market got its name from the Portuguese tax for everything entering and leaving Amazonia. The smells and sights were amazing – huge amounts of Amazonian produce (fish, nuts, meal, etc.) and local handicrafts. Near that
market is a large warehouse area that is currently under renovation. The warehouse is a prefabricated metal structure that was created in England and sent out then reassembled in Belem at the beginning of the 20
th century. Due to the weather conditions, mainly the high humidity and rain, the structure requires extensive upkeep and frequent restorations.
From the market area the tour continued over to Forte do Presépio, which was established in 1616 on the highest point of land, a mere 3 meters above the river, on that part of the Amazon to defend the city from other foreign invading forces. The fort actually overlooks the market area which stretches along the river front. Unfortunately the spare camera battery was on the bus so no pictures were taken until B. got back to the bus to go on to the next stops.
The tour then stopped at the Basilica of Our Lady of Nazareth. The Basilica has a spectacular interior, marble columns, brilliant stained glass windows, ornate wood and mosaic tile work throughout including the ceiling.
The last stop on the tour was at the Rodrigues
Alves Wood-Botanic Garden. This garden preserves over 2,500 native Amazonia native plants, and includes an orchidary. The garden also includes a small zoological section which features birds and animals of the Amazon jungles. Not in a cage was one of our friend’s (you know who you are!) favourite animals, the 3-toed sloth. Brooke’s tour was scheduled to last 5.5 hours but it ran a little long with the tender rides.
My part of the day was spent primarily on boats, which I indicated earlier left one wondering a great deal about their sea-worthiness.
We followed the other tour buses into the city from the tender dock and ended up at another dock in the center of Belem where we boarded yet again another small river craft. We had to wait for another bus to arrive, as they wanted to maximize the use of the craft. After a wait of over 20 minutes the other bus, which had left the tender dock at the same time as we did, arrived and we set off. The driver of that bus got caught in heavy inbound traffic.
The tour guides tried to provide a
running commentary on what we were seeing along the banks of the river but the PA system was drowned out by the very noisy diesel engine. In the end the two guides had to roam up and down the boat and provided more one-on-one descriptions to the various parts of the craft as questions arose.
Interestingly I saw several of the same sites that Brooke saw on her tour but from the river perspective, namely the Fort and the Open-air Market.
After 90 minutes of travelling upstream we stopped and got off the boat. Not really a “pristine rainforest location” but forest preserve right along beside the path of a high power electric transmission line.
The guides broke us back into our smaller groups and took us through a section of the forest explaining things as they went along. The major stops were at a villager’s house where he was cutting Brazil Nut pods open with a machete and extracting the nuts. He cleaned them up and passed samples to us so that we could eat a fresh nut.
Along the path the guide picked a cocoa pod
off the trunk of its tree again breaking it open for us to show how the seeds formed.
The walk continued to the center of this little section of “forest” where we encountered three young men climbing the trees to harvest some of the natural fruits from the forest. We walked a little further to a gigantic tree which was over 80 meters tall had a base well over 10 meters around. The tree was a distant relative to the Red Woods.
Near that tree we were introduced to a 70 year old man who still actively climbs palm trees, without the aid of any special equipment save a home-made foot sling, to harvest coconuts. He provided us was a physical demonstration of his technique and ability.
While we were at this demonstration the gentleman brought out a tarantula spider for an up close and fuzzy inspection.
We continued the walk back to the river where we boarded our “river craft” for the journey back downstream to Belem. During our time on the walk the tide had come in filling some of the shallower channels through the islands
so boats were able to take a short cut through one of them. It really didn’t help much as the journey back downstream took almost as long as the upstream trip.
As we neared the city center the sky darkened and we were caught in a torrential downpour. Earlier in the day one of the guides had predicted that based on the usual weather patterns we would “get” rain in the afternoon – he was right. Exiting from the boat we made it ashore to the waiting area, which fortunately protected us from the heavy rain. Our bus arrived and we scampered aboard. The trip back to the ship was uneventful from that point on.
We were the last passengers on the last tender of the day and as I approached the room the Captain indicated that he was ready to pull up the anchor and sail away. Brooke was, with good reason, worried that I had not yet arrived at our room and was prepared to go off to the main office and tell them I had not yet arrived, when I put my key card in the door.
My
scheduled 5.5 hour adventure turned into one closer to 9 hours and if I had not thrown a bag of M&M’s into my backpack I would have been in dire straights as there was no food provided on this trip. Brooke greeted my arrival with two pieces of pizza fetched earlier from the Lido.
After dinner we opted not to go to the evening show, which was a violinist, Oliver Lewis, but went back to the room and collapsed.
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