So I arrived in Belém at 2 AM on Tuesday, and paid through the nose (R$90) for an okay hotel with a wireless connection only in the lobby and a generous breakfast spread.
I'm as far north as I'll be for the entire trip. Belém sits at about 1 degree of latitude south of the equator.
It was a low-quality first week, in terms of work. Due to the Easter holiday, my letter requests for interviews hadn't arrived and so peole didn~t expect me to call. I ended up sending multiple follow-up emails, which set back the days in which I could make requests. My late arrival didn't help.
Despite the work troubles, I've been quite taken with Belém. It's my kinda town. There are trees along the sidewalk for shade, a grid-like layout (though not as straight and orderly as Campo Grande), public plazas and parks, and enough compactness to put most sites - both touristy and work-related - in walking distance. Were Belém in the US, it would receive a high walkability score.
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I decided to use my first weekend in town to, er, leave town. Belém sits on the southern part of the Amazon River delta. The delta (drainage basin) is immense. It's difficult to overstate just how much fresh water is coming out of the rainforest.
Anyway, in the middle of the Basin is the Ilha (Island) of Marajó, the largest littoral island in the world, and a landmass approximately the size of Switzerland. The island's main attractions are water buffalo, their meat and cheese, and isolated beaches. (Belém, a city with a working port, has no beaches and some not insubstantial water pollution.)
So I arrived at the River Terminal early at 6 AM on Saturday to catch the 6:30 AM ferry to Camará. I had three objectives for the weekend: see buffalo, eat buffalo, and go swimming.
The ferry ride took three hours and was pretty boring. You can see the sights below. I left my computer and all books back in luggage storage in Belém, and thus had nothing to entertain me. Well, that's not entirely accurate. My phone has Sudoku puzzles as its only free game. I don't really see the attraction of Sudoku. I play it when I'm waiting in line for things like vaccinations and grocery check-out. It's a pretty formulaic, repetitive game.
Early morning crew in Belém
The Belém skyline behind us.
The view of the riverbank, once we left Belém, looked pretty similar.
At certain points, there were no islands to pass and nothing but fresh river water to the horizon.
Our ferry boat line, going the other way. The blue tarps keep out the intense sun.
Two days before I left, I had an interview with a former Secretary of Transport, who proposed that one could get rich (and should get rich) building a hovercraft/hydrofoil factory in Brazil. Most rivers are large, but not all of them are navigable. The river depth varies, preventing the movement of large (cargo) ships. My interviewee has been part of a group that's trying to dredge the rivers and thus create a northern outlet for the crops of the Center-West (read: soy, wheat, and cotton from Mato Grosso). If they could manage to move cargo ships from the interior through Belém - and the rivers do extend that far - they could drastically cut costs. Belém is far closer to US, European, and Asian markets than are the ports of São Paulo and Paraná.
He didn't really know much about the environmental impacts of such a project. He probably thought they were exaggerated.
In any case, we arrived in Camará on the island about 10 AM, and were herded loudly onto buses going to various destinations. I was headed to Salvaterra, the middle city (only three cities are open to independent tourists; most of the island's interior is preserve or swamp) with stingray-free beaches and a few hotel options.
It's unfair to say that Salvaterra is a one-horse town. There were multiple horses. And multiple buffalo. And multiple really hideous black birds.
One of the horses. And note the ongoing football game behind him.
After arrival, I took a walk to find Praia Grande, the beach of some note and the place, according to Lonely Planet, where one could eat lunch cheaply. (The buffet at my hotel looked rather unappetizing, sitting there for a while in the heat.) I did find the beach, and found some buffalo cooling themselves in the confluence of a small creek and the (fresh water) bay (pictured above).
For lunch, I ordered buffalo carne asada. It came with rice, beans, farofa, buttered spaghetti, and mayonnaise-based potato salad. My hypothesis is that fresh fruit and vegetables (besides mangoes) are costly to import from the mainland, thus the dearth of them. My later visit to the town supermarket, which lacked a produce section, supported this hypothesis. Lunch was, unfortunately, pretty bad. The buffalo was close to carne de sol, and so was pretty salty. The rice, beans, and farofa were standard, but I didn't take a second bite of the spaghetti or the potato salad.
However, it was reasonably priced for a touristy place. It's also not the first time I've ordered a dish meant for two while eating alone.
On the walk back to the hotel, I passed the same buffalo grazing just off the beachfront road. I hoped they would stay there while I went to retrieve my camera.
Of course they did not. I had to wander down the long beach to take pictures from afar. I won't say that they're disappointing, because they can't choose their appearance or species. I will say that they look (and pretty much taste) like cattle.
The aforementioned ugly birds.
I did get a chance to go swimming in the fresh water. The river washes down, as you can imagine, tons of debris from the rainforest. Not all of it rots or is consumed before it reaches the ocean. As a result, a swimmer moving through the water will encounter seeds, leaves, twigs, and even large branches floating on the surface. I have a splinter in my right index finger from my attempt to throw a rough piece of wood out of my way.
The water is also choppy in the afternoon, when the wind picks up. It was much more tranquil when I went swimming the next morning.
I ordered a veggie pizza (with very thinly-sliced vegetables) for dinner and had a vegetarian prato feito (beans, rice, vinagrette, and farofa) for lunch the next day. The hotel breakfast was fruit-less, which is a first for me in Brazil.
An attempt at still life.
"The years you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when there was a water buffalo."
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In the end, however, despite the bad food and the fact that there was nothing much to do, I accomplished all my goals. I most likely won't go back to the island, except perhaps as part of a pampered package tour or if I happen to be stationed in Belém for an extended period of time and want to swim.
I can, however, say that I went swimming in the delta/basin/mouth of the Amazon, which is something.
No, there were no piranhas.
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I`m back in Belém for another week, and my luck in getting interviewees has (slightly) turned. I might have a chance to see more tourist sites here in Belém, and I've found a cheaper hotel.
Next Monday, I have an overnight bus trip to São Luís, the capital of the neighboring (corrupt, underdeveloped) state of Maranhão. I've already had two email responses from Maranhão to my letters, which portends good things.
So it goes. Or, as the Portuguese version of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five translates that phrase, "Coisas da vida" or "E assim por diante."
1 comment:
I love the hoof prints comment!
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