First Amazon port! Yay! We are finally here and get to meet Rafa in person after all this time and communications! We’re all excited, except for the fact that suddenly we are told that we will be tendering instead of docking. Oh jeez! And we have 44 people on this tour – not exactly the easiest thing to do – getting tender tickets for all of us. Plus, bless Rafa’s heart, he had reserved and paid for vans to take us to the boats for our river/nature cruise, and the van operator told him they sold the vans to another operator – without giving him back his money! So, we have to take taxis (4 in a car) for an extra $10 US each to get to the boats. What a nightmare – for Rafa, and of course an inconvenience for us – but hey – it’s Brazil –what can we expect? The ship keeps preaching – this is a 3rd world country, the buses are not air conditioned, the guides don’t speak good English, please don’t expect much….so…hey, what can you do? And we are paying far less than the ship tour prices for our tours, so you roll with the punches!
We manage to organize everyone, and get most of us off on the 2nd tender. Rafa meets us at the port entrance and after hugs and kisses, we hop in a taxi with Mary Lynn and Doug, and head to the pier. The cabbie if wonderful. He gives us a city tour, all in Portuguese, which we can sort of translate and figure out – so we see the cathedral, the church, the main square, the fish market, the “product” market, it’s great, and he’s so sweet, dropping us off across from the pier, saying aqui, aqui. Ok, we’re here. But, there is no one else here? What gives? Fortunately we are in contact with Rafa, confirm we are in the right place, and finally people start showing up and we find the other guides (who had been there since 9am – because we all thought we’d be docking and be there early – but not to be – and had gone off somewhere for coffee or refreshments or whatever) and get organized. We have become the unofficial organizers of the group, so we count everyone off – and send off 22 folks on one boat – while waiting for Rafa and a few others who were “lost” at a museum where the cabbie erroneously dropped them.
Finally, we are on the boat and out on the river, sailing along past the city proper and into the meeting of the waters (the “wedding of the waters”) – where the Tapajos meet the muddy Amazon River. Originally,we were scheduled to have 3 or 4 smaller speed boats for the tour, but Rafa has managed to wrangle us 2 larger boats – like the ferry boats that ply the river between Santarem, Belem and Manaus. These are 2 levels – designed for freight on the first level and passengers on the second. The upper level comes complete with hooks over head for hammocks – which is how you sleep on the 2 and 3 day trips up and down the river. All open air, very communal, and for us, a great way to experience our first tour of the Amazon (sans hammocks – we have chairs instead).
The meeting of the waters is really wild, there is literally a line where the muddy waters of the Amazon meet the clean water of the Tapajos, and standing at the railing, with Jean (one of our local tour guides) we can watch how the two rivers mix and see the borders of each so clearly. Soon, we leave the Tapajos and sail into the little lake area where, if we weren’t so late from the tender disaster, we would have been able to walk through local villages and meet some residents. But, as we have lost at least and hour plus, we can only sail a little ways into the peaceful lake areas, staying on the boats, past huts with locals fishing and washing the dishes in the river, kids playing on the river banks and little long-tail boats motoring by us that remind us very much of Thailand. All the houses (huts) are on stilts because the river rises so high in the wet season. Now, at the end of the dry season, it doesn’t seem possible the water could ever get that high. It must be an amazing sight to see once the banks flood.
Turning around, we head back out to the main Tapajos river, passing by Santarem city, now accompanied by Igor (I think that was the other guide’s name) who talks to us about the city, how much it has changed and lamenting about how the development has overtaken nature, pointing out a huge new development where they have bulldozed all the trees and packed the houses so tightly together there isn’t any space left for greenery. Guess it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, it is always the same,the sad price of progress. Particularly more sad here because of the loss of the rainforest and what it means for our planet in the long run.
About 30 minutes later we arrive at a totally secluded area of the river, where there are white sand beaches devoid of any human activity. It’s gorgeous and peaceful, and the boys (which is how I am now referring to Igor and Jean) tell us that these are some of the best beaches – although they will disappear during the wet season. After navigating around a sand bank that reaches out into the river we turn in toward the shore, heading to an area with palapa huts and some structures further back up the beach. Turns out this is our lunch spot, and the boats run right up on the beach, with the help of the restaurant guys who guide us in just like they do on the tarmac of an airport! Once aground, they pound a huge steel stake into the beach to tie up the boats, and we disembark via a gangplank that ends right at the waters edge. Too fun!
I tell Jean how cool this is, we’ve never been on a boat this size that just pulled right up onto the beach – and he is just astounded that this is a first for us! It’s the only way to get to these beaches, and obviously just a normal thing here. Lunch is a feast of all sorts of local fish dishes, served family style at a huge long table under an open air gazebo. You know me and fish, not the best of pals, but every one of these dishes was fantastic. From the fish balls to the grilled fish (my favorite) to the fish sauteed with onions and other veggies, everything was perfectly done and (if you ignore the rice!) just the right amount of food that didn’t leave us stuffed that late in the day.
After finishing our big beers (and buying more to take back to the ship), we traipse back across the sand, and reverse course on the open water, past the main town of Santarem and onto the pier where Rafa has managed to find a bus to take us back to the tender pier! Bravo! It’s a typical Amazonian bus – no air, windows open, not a seat to spare, just like Oceania has been warning us about in all their tour descriptions (!!) but it is a bus and much preferable to trying to find 10 taxis to ferry us back here.
We bid farewell to Rafa, who will now fly to Manaus to meet us there in 2 days, and hope the tender back to the Insignia where the nice cool A/C and refreshing shower are waiting for us. Santarem sends us off in style with a lovely sunset as we sail further into the Amazon looking forward to the adventures that still await us.
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