Santarem

Santarem sits where the Tapajos joins the Amazon, and the two rivers run side by side for kilometres without blending - the Tapajos green-blue and the Amazon brown, with a visible line between them that you can see from the waterfront and cross by boat. The town has been a port since the seventeenth century, built on a much older Tapajos settlement whose ceramics are among the finest produced in the pre-Columbian Amazon and are held in the local museum. It became a soy terminal in the 2000s, which changed the economy and the politics of the surrounding forest. Downstream at Alter do Chao the Tapajos leaves a white sand bar in the dry season that gives the place its overworked nickname of the Caribbean of the Amazon.

History

The first written mention of the Tapajós people here dates from 1542, when Francisco de Orellana raided one of their maize fields, and after Pedro Teixeira's expedition traded with the people at the river mouth, Jesuits founded a mission; Father João Filipe Bettendorff founded the village on 22 June 1661 as Aldeia do Tapajós and built the chapel of Our Lady of the Conception. Francisco da Mota Falcão began a square fortress with corner bastions by the river in 1693, finished by his son in 1697, around which the town grew; it became a vila named Santarém, after the Portuguese town, in 1758, and a city on 24 October 1848 (Wikipedia, Santarém, Pará).

The main sights

• Two rivers not mixing - the green Tapajos beside the brown Amazon.
• Tapajos ceramics - pre-Columbian pottery from the settlement beneath the town.
• A working river port - now also a soy terminal on the Amazon.
• Dry-season sand - the bars that emerge downstream from about July.

When to go

July to December, when the water drops and the beaches appear. Two days.

Practical notes

The town itself is functional rather than attractive and most of the interest is on the water or at Alter do Chao. Heat and humidity are constant. Riverboat journeys in either direction take days. Hotels are basic.

Nearby

Alter do Chao is downstream; Fordlandia is up the Tapajos.

Key facts