If pedantic with definition, you might not consider the state of Pará a region of the Amazons. But the biodiversity is virtually one and the same. For a while I’ve stayed in a rural area outside Alter do Chão, about an hour or more by city bus from Santarém, the major hub. And though even the center of Alter is fairly rural, it hives tourist pomp. The rusticity wears violet bloodstains.
It’s not even the high season. The water level eliminates all trace of sparkling sand from view. Water bungalows and floating restaurants lay half submerged. Trees soak their lower extremities. What a beauty to behold.
See that island there beyond? That’s Ilha do Amor. For R10 (circa 2022), the boatman pilots the canoe across the river, up to four passengers. A motor boat avails for twice the amount, should urgent business compel you to the island with haste. Be sure to arrange the return ride with Charon there. He won’t linger while you roam the Bower of Blysse.
But even the center citadel boasts hardly but a fairly restrained glamour should that tourist or the merchant or that operator not engage in warble and gobble. Nothing singular. Though a few times a week the nighttime can stir a cooking too hot for sound sleep. But some clamour I even relish. Oh Carimbó rhythms, play a song for me.
Alas, I stray further out along the main road, secluded in the coalescent kingdom of the flora and the fauna.
One nuisance: must always reach the center square for the cash machine. Which, although under the same guise of those I used before, I suspect of slyness, stealing a couple of percentage points from the market rate, never mind the customarily denied conversion.
Another: Only 2.5/three pharmacies around the center, none of which carry the proper size of contact-lens solution I recently exhausted. One carried a gigantic expensively priced bottle inconvenient for my escapades.
Three days that I’d made the round trip to one of the others, the pharmacist having assured the order executed for three different sizes of solution. At the end he received not a single solution but 10-ml lubricating drops, insisting that this also serve, which be even the case, wouldn’t last a week. So I’d tossed the contacts only 30% into the present cycle, having no solution until the following month that I’ll likely see the larger city smog. Glasses for the interim, being the cheaper route regardless.
Another nuisance, though more of blessing: the absence of a WiFi signal. Only in a nearby bakery do I manage to connect once a day or two and execute in batch a series of affairs. Otherwise it’s offline mode, perfect for writing, which I’m not exactly producing wholesale hereabouts. Much other web-related research, mostly text, I cache for offline reading at my pleasure. No phone, scarce internet, not bad.
With enough discipline, you’ll see a series (or a handful) of such ramblings. In the absence of discipline, you’ll see very little hit the press. Not sure which is the better.
Questions, comments? Connect.