Adventures with Julia

Friday, October 10, 2025

Depart Lancois at 9am after a very interesting and action packed few days in the white Lancois sand dunes.

Drove an hour and a half to the nearest airport, in a town called Barreirinhas. Mark looked for an ATM. Found two. The second one had money Mark could access. We flew from there in a Cherokee 6, just like our old plane, with a pilot named Jeff. He flew us to Sao Luis, a 50 minute flight including a long low pass over the vast sand dunes saving us 2 1/2 hours of driving.

At Sao Luis we transferred to a Cessna Citation and were up and away after an hour on the ground. The captain was a man named Dercio.

The 2-hour flight went well until half way through the leg, when we lost the left engine. Oh well, sure hope one is enough. Dercio very calmly informed us he was making a detour to the nearest airport, Belem. Within 15 minutes we were in Belem and taxied to a hangar where a crew was waiting for the plane to arrive. We learned the failure was caused by a loss of oil pressure.

Another flight crew was called in to fly us onward in a King Air. We finally landed at our destination, Santarem, at 5:45pm. It was a long day of sitting but not nearly as long if we had used our scheduled commercial flight.

Carlos, our next host, met us at the Santarem airport and accompanied us to our hotel for a night, Casa da Orla, on the beach in a small town called Alter do Chao, where we are to pick up our 4-day boat ride on the 11th. Here the river Tapajos meets the Amazon. Carlos left us to ourselves for the evening and we wandered the streets of the town until we settled on a place for dinner. The food, angel hair pasta with crispy garlic and green olives on pizza was not very good, but it was filling. The air is very warm and humid and we are grateful for the good AC unit in the room. Out of the heat, we went to bed early.

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Up by 7am, we enjoyed a view of the little “Island of Love” across the river from our windows. It is a popular place to spend the day sitting in the water. Six months of the year the water is low as we see it here. The other six months the water level is right to the edge of the road. Best to be here now, even if it is hot.

About 10am we went out into the heat to walk the streets and search for a 2-piece bathing suit for me. We did buy a suit and saw a hat with the town’s name on it, but never again. Way too hot and sticky to try on clothes.

Back in the room we stayed put until Carlos came to fetch us to go to our boat. Sure hope it has good AC.

Once on board, we learned the boat does have reasonable AC in the bedroom cabins. Carlos introduced us to the boat crew, the captains gave us the safety talk and off we went. Shortly thereafter, we were served a nice lunch of fish, rice, beans, cassava and salad greens. This seems to be the usual fare at meal time. We, at least, loved the greens.

We motored 2.5 hours upstream on the Tapajos River to a lovely beach and dropped anchor. The crew set up shade cloth and chairs for us and soon we were in the very warm, but peasant fresh water.

We stayed in the water until late afternoon when we went for a canoe ride through the local mangrove-like waterway hoping to see birds, snakes, crocodiles and any other living thing.

The indigenous man who paddled us through the swamp, was excellent at paddling without making a sound. Soon we were all quiet too and looking intently for anything that moved. We saw many birds but only recognized, woodpeckers, a couple of eagles and a few kingfishers. As the sky became dark we stopped hearing birds and started hearing frogs. Many of the sounds were new to us, including the frog calls. The canoe man dropped us off at our tender and back we went to the boat for dinner.

At about 8pm, our two cooks presented us with steaks, a delicious eggplant cassarole and the usual rice, crispy cassava and green salad. Dessert was ice cream. Then we organized our clothing and went to bed. In spite of the small bed, we slept reasonable well. The boat stayed parked on the sand island.

Sunday, October 12, 2025

A relaxed morning with coffee and fruit for breakfast.

About 10am, we took the tender further upstream to a small community of 153 people in 45 families, who produce latex products from a few rubber trees in the area for tourists.

At one time there were thousands of rubber trees cultivated as a large business with the latex going mostly to China. Before that, just a few kilometers up the beach is a small town founded by the Ford Motor Company back in the 1930’s, called Belterra. Meanwhile, the trees developed a blight, so shoots from the trees were planted in China, where the latex is now commercially produced. The local business we visited, Jamaraqua, is a cottage industry with limited products going to tourists who visit the area. A local artisan gave us a demonstration of the process for making artifacts for tourists.

We bought a few necklaces and went for a walk through the forest and out to another beach.

On the way, Carlos named a few trees and saw a small green Parrot snake. We watched it for awhile, but it did not move much, so we walked on and spotted a Strangler Fig and a Gumbo Limbo tree that has stripes on its bark.

We also noticed a few Ipe trees across the river due to their yellow flowers. At the beach, the water was much cooler and more refreshing. After awhile, the tender picked us up and took us back to the boat for lunch.

We were served what we had asked for—a big, mixed green salad.

Then we were back to our shaded beach setting for the afternoon. AT 5:30 The captain pulled the anchors and we motored downriver back to Alter do Chao for the night. We were served a nicely prepared filet mignon and chatted with Carlos for quite awhile before turning in.