Marajo Island

Marajo sits in the mouth of the Amazon and covers about forty thousand square kilometres, roughly the size of Switzerland - flat, half savanna and half forest, and inundated across much of its area during the wet season. Water buffalo define it: brought in the nineteenth century, they now number in the hundreds of thousands, outnumber the people, work as draught animals, supply the milk for Marajo cheese, and are ridden by the police at Soure, which is not a tourist stunt but the practical way to cross flooded ground. The island also carries the Marajoara archaeological tradition - elaborate painted and incised funerary ceramics from a complex society that occupied it for centuries before European arrival.

What you actually see

• An island the size of Switzerland - the largest in the Amazon delta, part river and part sea.
• Buffalo everywhere - outnumbering people, worked, milked and ridden by the police.
• Marajoara ceramics - the painted funerary pottery of the pre-Columbian society.
• Seasonal flooding - much of the savanna under water for half the year.

When to go

July to December, the drier half. Three days.

Honest expectations

The ferry from Belem takes three to four hours and schedules are limited. Roads on the island are dirt and become difficult in the wet. Beaches are river beaches with brown water, not the Caribbean.

Nearby

Belem and the Ver-o-Peso market are across the bay; Algodoal is east along the coast.