Santarem

 Today was our first proper stop in Brazil at Santarem.   Santarem is a city of about 350000 people about 600km (400  miles)  upstream from the mouth of the Amazon. At this point the Amazon is still about 30 miles wide.

We took the tenders to shore very early in the morning for the start of our tour.  We started off visiting the Cathedral and the Museum in the city itself.

After that we drove about 20 minutes outside the city to a tourist attraction in the forest where they showed us rubber being harvested from rubber trees, manioc flour being produced and brazil nuts being harvested.   There was a short trail through the "forest".  Unfortuntely the most exciting wildlife we spotted on the trail were some feral chickens.  I did actually see a toucan, but it was way up in the canopy and was moving about a lot, so there was no chance of getting a decent photo.

It had been an early morning trip and we were back at the dock by 10.45am, but it was already really hot and humid.   There were some market stalls set up by the dock with a nice selection of tat.  So we did a bit of souvenir shopping before heading back to the ship. 

The Tapajos river joins the Amazon here at Santarem and the 2 rivers flow alongside each other for a fair distance before merging.   The Amazon is the brown one and the Tapajos is the darker one.

Some people saw Amazon pink river dolphins from the ship as we were sailing away, but sadly I missed them.