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Today we arrived in the “resort” town Alter Do Chao, which is 20 miles West of Santarem or a 45 minute bus ride along one of the only roads in the state of Para. It is located on the Tapajós river and next to a lagoon called Lago Verde. According to our daily newspaper, Passages, it is justly the subject of a thousand postcards. We’ll have to take their word for that but there was a beach, some hotels and a pier to which we docked. Margaret and I decided to make a quick trip…we just had no idea just how quick the trip would be!
We were anchored today so we boarded the tender and opted to sit up on top. Sometimes it feels hotter sitting on top (fully exposed to the sun) while other times it feels hotter sitting inside the tender…so it’s really a coin toss. There were no organized excursions today so the only thing to do was to go to the town center and “walk around” a bit. As we slowly made our way to the small dock, we realized that it was getting even more HOT and HUMID (assuming that is possible)! Luckily there were some river dolphins swimming near the tender so we could take our minds off the heat by searching the water for glimpses of these playful animals.
When we got closer to the dock we realized there were some local children showing off by jumping off of a nearby pier into the water…and this looked like it might be the most fun thing to do here. There were a number of local vendors selling handicrafts near the dock but not much else. So, being the practical people we are, we decided, along with a few other people, to just kept our seats on top of the tender and called it a “Boat Ride and Dolphin Viewing” tour! The tender loaded up a lot of hot and sweaty looking cruisers and we slowly motored our way back to the Mariner, thereby ending a nice, short afternoon tour.
I learned later that Alter do Chão has for many years been a popular tourist destination for locals and is pretty much THE destination for the wealthy people in Santarem and Manaus. It is also becoming a somewhat well-known international destination due primarily to a sand bar that appears during the dry season (we could see a bit of it…but in the dry season the beach is much wider) that fills with bars and visitors when the water recedes.
Alter Do Chao Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Alter-Do-Chao-Mar-3-2010/25178292_vtRgbP#!i=2065160552&k=2Xw7wtw