Where to Next?: December 22 - Santarem, Brazil (Amazon River)

meeting of the waters

Weather – 28º, no rain, humid

tender platform and waiting boats

Steps – 6,994

Santarem has a population of about 300,000 and is an important Amazon trading center, this is also where the Tapajós and the Amazon rivers meet. This is called the “Meeting of the Waters” and is one of Santarem's major attractions. Just before we arrived at anchor, we could see the different ‘waters’ – the brown muddy Amazon and the clear blue Tapajós not mixing.

iguana, lizard, or caiman

view from heading off

Weren’t supposed to tender today, but due to the low level of the Amazon we
had to. We’ve never experienced 2 types of tenders running simultaneously. Typically, tender operations are the ship’s domain, but occasionally there’s a union situation, where we have to use local tenders. That’s not the situation today, it’s due to

meeting of the waters

the different tours going on boats that just come and pick us up from the ship and the fact that we aren’t docked at all.

We made it to Santarem an hour behind

house on stilts

schedule due to the Amazon’s current – I guess this must vary. This is kind of bonus time - we have an hour to enjoy the Tapajós River as we sailed into Santarem.

Once we were on the new boat that

other river boats in convoy

would be our excursion boat, we headed up the Tapajós only a bit to meet the Amazon. We sailed on for about an hour

fishing not catching

while we tried to learn bits of info from the guide. I say tried because the boat’s motor was LOUD and the guide’s sound system wasn’t the best. We knew this ahead of time, so we weren’t surprised, but it was a bit of a drag not being able to hear everything.

Along the way out of Santarem, we passed many boats sitting on the banks of the Amazon. The river is low, so many of these boats will sit until the river rises. We see a few river ‘gas stations’, a few restaurants, a couple of churches, a residential high rise, and

egret...I think

numerous industrial buildings.

All along the Amazon are tributaries feeding the

water buffalo

mammoth river, these tributaries as you would imagine have interesting plants and animals. We spotted our first Amazon animal…a swimming lizard or iguana, it actually might have been a caiman, a small alligator type animal we have a date with in a couple of days.

Today we are in search of piranha! Fishing for them to be exact. We, along with about 5 other touring boats, found a place to cast our lines with chunks of beef. In total, our boat caught 3…none by Chris or me. It