From Cayenne, I next headed to Belem, Brazil. I wasn't sure what to expect since the only people that I know who have been there use it as a transit point rather to actually explore. If you want to travel the entire length of the Amazon, you will start or end here. The way everyone made it sound, it seemed like a little frontier town.
Well compared to Cayenne with 150,000 people, Georgetown with 250,000 and Paramaribo somewhere in between, Belem seemed like a huge city even having sky scrapers! And considering it has 1 and a half million residents(2.5 if you include suburbs) it is! Belem is also cool because it means Bethlehem in Portuguese which is one of my favorite towns in NH :)
It had some remnants of when it was a thriving city because of the rubber industry but suffered heavily when that bubble collapsed. The nice thing is that they are now in the process of renovating many of these people which can be seen with a walk through town: Plus so many of the streets are tree lined which definitely beautifies it. Especially when they are mango trees! yum yum!
And then one street over not so much. That's how this city went. I was trying to hit all the historic sites and going from one to the next via foot required traveling through some parts of town that I'm sure the tourist board doesn't put on the website.
However, it was on one of these side streets, that I was able to get those great little snack. Some soup which had been simmering on the burners that the woman brought with her. Each ingredient seemed to have a different pot and weren't added together until she served me. And it was delicious! For 5 Real! that's a little more than $1.
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| Mine was the Tacaca |
And again, one street further over back to well-manicured parks.
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| I couldn't help taking this photo. |
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| Again, all those great buildings and then this one so debilitated that a whole tree was growing out of it! |
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| The Amazon! |
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| Belem's Christ the Redeemer. Seriously. That's their name for this statue. Slightly anti-climatic if you were expecting Rio |
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| The vendors! |
I kind of wish I was heading right home from Belem because I would definitely loaded up on all their seafood and good amerindian crafts. The picture above are all variations of shrimp... And I had a few types during my time there, and they are all good!
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| The harbor |
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| Lunch! Spaghetti, rice and beans, and two huge skewers of meat. $10 Real! |
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| The price may have reflected the location ;) |
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| Supposedly this church was modeled after St Paul's Cathedral |
So I had a good day exploring Belem. I was planning on staying out as late as I could because I had a 3am flight and didn't have a hotel. However around 7p it started raining HARD so I headed to the airport. It all worked out well though because I got a chance to write this blog and get more than my share of coffee.
Plus-adventures are really just how you perceive them. I made a fun game where I had to race down one set of stairs, power walk across the entire terminal and back up the other stairs and back. It was surprisingly hard to improve my time... I guess I am a bad walker(that would explain my rapid performance decline in marathons).
Okay that's it for now.
Definitely more fun in store for tomorrow:)
Until next time,
Danny
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