Amazon & Carnival Explorer Cruise - Day 17: Belem, Brazil

Wednesday, February 20

Today we are in Belem, the first of fourteen ports we will visit in Brazil.  Brazil is the largest country in South and Central America and covers almost half of South America's land mass.  It is the fifth largest country in size in the world and is also the world's fifth largest in population with about 210,000,000.  It was discovered by the Portuguese and remained a Portuguese colony until 1822 when it gained its independence.  Portuguese remains as Brazil's primary language.  It is interesting that Brazil borders every country in South America except Ecuador and Chile.



Icoaraci, the town we are tendering into, is part of the Belem metropolitan area. 

Belem is a large city with a population of a 2.5 million population in its Metropolitan Region with 1.5 million living in the city itself.  It lies approximately 60 miles upriver from the Atlantic and is a busy port, but unfortunately too shallow for us to dock in so instead, we anchored downriver from Belem and tendered into the city of Icoaraci.  It is an hours bus ride from Icoarac ito Belem, but fortunately the ship provided a shuttle.  At first we thought Belem was on the Amazon River, but it is actually on the Para River, which is part of the greater Amazon River system and separated from the larger part of the Amazon delta by Marajo Island.

We had a ship’s tour booked today and had to meet in the showroom before catching the tender to go ashore.  We were there before 8:00 as we were supposed to leave by 8:15, but we had to wait quite a while until the tenders were ready.  They finally announced our tender was ready and we were led down to the tender loading area and were quickly on our way.  It was only a short trip to the tender dock on shore, but for some reason we sat for quite a while in the tender before it was allowed to dock.  This day was starting off to be a lot of hurry up and wait.

Once off the tender we found our bus, which was very nice and comfortable and more importantly had good air conditioning as it was very hot and humid.  Today's tour was a riverboat ride up the river and then a hike through the jungle.  After getting on the bus we settled in for the one hour drive to Belem.  As we left Icoaraaci we were reminded that despite its size and economy, Brazil was still a third world country.  The homes were run down, covered in graffiti with huge piles of trash lining the streets.  In contrast we passed factories and businesses behind fences that were clean modern and well kept.

These shots of the numerous street vendors were shot from the bus.

 

Before we left on the cruise, we had been warned that Brazil was one of the more dangerous countries in the world.  It is rated in the top twenty countries in the world for violent crimes and we were warned to be watchful, not wear jewelry, to travel in groups and not to wander away from the tourist areas.  This of course made us wary and a little anxious, but we are not going to let it keep us from seeing Brazil.

We finally reached Belem, with a skyline of many high rise buildings.  After making our way through the morning traffic of Belem, we finally reached the dock where we would board the riverboat.  The dock was right where the central market of Belem was, which I believe is the largest in Brazil and it looked like it.

We boarded the river boat which had two levels and we opted for the top level that had less shade, but better views.  Our side of the boat was in the shade which was welcome as it was hot and humid as I mentioned before.  We had another wait before we started as this was a large excursion and one of the buses had been delayed, but finally we were underway.

The last two people arrive at the dock and we are ready to get underway.

We sailed up the Para River and had views of Belem as well as the forested banks of the river ahead.  It was interesting to see the tall buildings of Belem in the background in contrast to the shack like building along the river.  There were several large islands in the river and we navigated between them the and saw the dwellings of the inhabitants of the islands.  All of the homes and attached docks were on stilts over the water as it appeared there was nothing but jungle behind them.

The Central Market of Belem.

Views of the Belem riverfront as we started out river cruise.

 

The upper deck of our riverboat.  Definitely a crowd, but we had good seats on the outside rail and it didn't seem crowded to us.

Besides residences, it looked like there were also resorts scattered along the banks.  They were not exactly luxurious looking, but did look interesting.  It was a pleasant cruise as we were mostly in the shade and there was a cooling breeze off the water, but there was no escaping the humidity.  As residents of dry California, the high humidity is definitely unpleasant for us.

We were fascinated by the dwellings along the river.

 

After about an hour of cruising up the Amazon we approached a docking area where we stopped to go on our jungle hike.  The hike was interesting, but it was so hot and humid, and coupled with a slippery muddy trail, we didn’t find it very enjoyable.  Certainly those conditions are to be expected in the jungle, but today’s hike was just not our cup of tea.

We had to wear hard hats for our hike through the jungle.  It's the time of year when the Brazil nuts were dropping from the trees and while not life threatening, being hit on the head from such a height could be painful.

To get into the jungle we had to walk through a small village.

We didn't find our hike very interesting so there aren't many pictures/

The owner of the property lived in this house at the edge of the jungle where we went for our hike.

After our forty-five minute hike, it was back to the boat for our trip back to Belem.  It was a pleasant cruise back with the cooling breeze feeling very good and more interesting scenery along the riverbanks to look at.  The boat had a small bar and the cool drinks we bought also made the trip back enjoyable.

We came around the end of an island and there was the skyline of Belem.

 

Quite a contrast of the modern city and the old, rundown building along riverfront.  The old houses on the riverfront were there before the modern city was built behind them.

 

We arrived back at the dock in Belem and quickly boarded the buses back to the tender dock; the air conditioning on the bus felt very good.  We drove through downtown Belem on the way back and saw some of the historic buildings and sites.  The ride back seemed shorter as we didn’t have all the traffic we had in the morning, but we were still very late.  The ship was due to leave at 4:00 and we arrived later than that, but since we were on a ship’s tour, they waited for us.  We exited the bus and were quickly on the tender and on our way to the ship.  After a day of delays, our return went very quickly.

We arrive back at the tender dock.

 

It felt very good to be back in our air conditioned room and after showers we felt pretty much back to normal.  We did enjoy our tour today, but the delays and long process of getting to the boat was a bit tiring as our 4 1/2 hour tour turned into an eight hour tour.

After getting cleaned up we headed to the Neptune Lounge for some snacks as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and were very hungry.  We spent what was left of the afternoon relaxing before it was time for our dinner routine.  After trivia and dinner, it was back to the casino where I finally had some good luck and returned to our room with a profit – it had been a long dry spell.  Tomorrow is the first of two sea days and we are really looking forward to them.