Sunday 2nd Feb 2020
Santarem, a small city in the Brazilian state of Pará, has been a major player in the region’s booms of wood, rubber, minerals and, today, soybeans. Nearby is a ‘meeting of waters’ where the darker Rio Tapajos merges with the light-brown Amazon.
‘Clocks went forward 1 hour this morning.
Today our berth was quite well out of town, jammed between a grain import/export dock and a gas plant, delightful. The walk to town is apparently a couple of miles to anything significant, in the heat and humidity, and today is Sunday so its all shut anyway!
Luckily we have booked a nice little river boat journey. The boats coming to a pontoon right alongside the ship, so no need to walk more than 20 yards.
Merrily chugging along for a short while brought us to the “ Meeting of the Waters”, this is a different one to the one near Manaus, this is one where the “clear emerald-blue waters of the Tapajos River encounter the muddy waters of the magnificent Amazon River”.
The muddy is right but the clear emerald-blue not too accurate, but close enough. Just here is the place to view the Pink Amazon River Dolphins, they were good enough to put in an appearance, fairly discretely but good views, can’t say the same for the photos, just too quick, but we managed some part Dolphin snaps.
Off up the Amazon a short way to branch off into narrow channels into the Igapa, the flooded forrest, to Maica Lake.
Few more Dolphins in this part of the trip, great views of a three toed Sloth in a tree just by the river.
Otherwise we saw a selection of birds, like Herons, Egrets, Vultures and some small unknowns, quite a lot of other birds were heard but not seen. The only other animals seen going in were cows, I guess destined to become burgers quite soon.
A stop for a while to allow us all to try our hand a fishing for piranhas, a line with a cube of beef on a hook, supposedly showing the primitive method the locals catch their fish, mmm. No-one on our boat caught a piranha but there were a couple of catfish.
Returning back we spotted an Iguana just strolling along the river bank.
Once back on the Amazon the return trip took us close by the town, the ferry stop and the floating petrol station, very handy for all the river traffic.
Nice view of a very pretty blue Cathedral.
A short detour to just by the fish market, a favoured spot for dolphins, none today, then back to Queen Victoria.
Time for some sustenance and a short while out on deck in the sun, not too long, temperatures this afternoon hit 40 degrees centigrade, phew!
Our guide had suggested that there was good swimming to be had in the rivers, there being lovely white sand beaches up the Tapajos, the only problem we could see was that the muddy waters contained piranhas and the clear waters a fish known as “tiny fish”, that’s a translation of the Brazilian name, which have a habit of invading cosy spots like inside your ears or up your nose, we chose to decline the offer and stayed on the ship.
Afternoon sailaway back out into the Amazon and off down toward the coast.
This evening spent in the Golden Lion Pub with lots of mostly American passengers watching the NFL Superbowl, with suitable snacks provided, Kansas City Chiefs v San Francisco 49ers. Got very late but managed to see the conclusion back in our cabin, an exciting comeback win by KC.
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