The first few days...between huge cities and a tiny island

After a long 24+ hours of flying with 3 seperate legs with connections in Lima, Peru and Sao Paulo, Brazil, we finally made it to Belem the "wild west" (or should I say east?) of Brazil. It was immediately overwhelming! The first step was to find a bus from the airport to the approximate location of our hostel, which included finding an atm that would let us get money, finding a place to spend a couple reals so we could get change for the bus fare, communicating very poorly with the nice lady at the tourist info booth, and then playing cribbage at a sign with a bus on it (we just assumed the bus would take us to where we wanted to go). In Belem, we stayed at a hostel in the center of the commercial district. From there we could walk to the bank, the river, and several places to eat. We explored the large ver-o-pas market, checked out an old basilica, and wandered around the streets a bit to get a feel for the city of 1.6 million people.

Here is the view from on top of the basilica taking a picture towards the market in Belem.

Acacia was scared of getting meat in our dinner, so we made dinner the first night, pasta with tomatoe sauce. John spilled the pasta during round 1 of making it, but managed to drain the noodles succesfully the second time. The next day we slept in super late to catch up on sleep and then made our second attempt at the local buses, this time much more succsfully because pretty much every bus passed the park we were going to, to get to a large rainforest park in the middle of the city. After exploring the trailed park/zoo for a bit we bussed back to get some mangoes and walk along th river. Dinner was left over pasta and some fried thing that John got on the street. We then finished the night with a trip to the local craft brewery!

Yay! Brewery!


From Belem, we left early the next day to head to a spot that Acacia found in the guide book, an island called Algodol. We just spent the last couple of days on Algodol, an island with no cars or loud noises really. The 1000 or so people on the island got around on horses or carriages behind the horses. It was pretty relaxing, but a little Tulum-esque (mosquitos and sunburn). The days were filled with swimming, hucking the disk, playing cards, and finding the coldest drinks we could (beer or guarana).

Here´s a couple pictures of us hangin out in front of the pousada we were staying in. Literally right on the beach!

We were also fortunate enough to catch a bit of an island soccer game and meet some pretty friendly people.We ate local fruit and bread made by our hostel for breakfasts, and fish beans and rice for lunch. Our last dinner there was at a place run by a French guy. Delicious fish and fish soup with bread and some kind of chicken pate made up the meal along with a few capirinhas, the local drink of choice.

One of the many beach restaurants on Algodol that we ate at. This one was mostly a shade santcuary where we got food and beer after being sunburned and stung by jellyfish in the waves...

After spending longer on the island than anticipated because we were both feeling kind of sick we spent all day yesterday boating/taxiing/bussing to Sao Luis which is where we are spending tonight. tomorrow we are beginning an adventure to jericoacoara which sounds like a pretty long but exciting 4wd type of trek along the coast.