Day 9 - Arrived on Marajó Island!

 Today we left Belém and boarded a boat to Marajó Island.  The next four days were some of the best days of the entire trip for me.  I loved almost every single minute of it there.  

The picture below shows the huge boat that we were on.  It felt more like an airplane than a boat.  The only bad part about this 2 1/2 hour ride was that there was a leak on the side that I was on and our backpacks and bags got soaked that were sitting on the floor.  A nice crew member spent a lot of time trying to mop it up but it continued to be a problem.  Oh well, it was still a nice ride.

This was my first view of the island.  

"The Marajó Várzea ecoregion is a flooded forest complex that occurs in and aound Marajó Island, which lies at the mouth of the Amazon River and largely separates the Atlantic Ocean from the inland rivers. Having completed its 6,500 km journey, the Amazon River passes through this ecoregion as it reaches the sea."

Click HERE to learn more about ancient Marajó Island.

Marajó had a completely different feel than the city did. It was calm & peaceful.  

We hopped on our shuttle/bus and headed to a beach.  We were going to have an adventure today!

Although this looks like a beach on the ocean it was actually on a river!!  When the tide comes up, the sand barrier will disappear and it will turn into the Atlantic Ocean!!  So it goes from river water to salt water all in one day.  It was so incredible to experience this.

Time to hop on our boats!!

It felt like something I would read about in a book or watch on TV.  Just too neat to be real... but it was!

This was our tour guide for the week and he was also from Marajó.  Our teacher, Mel. made sure that we used CBT the entire trip which is Community Based Tourism.  This means that we didn't go through tour companies but actually utilized the people who lived there.  This means that they got all of the money directly for all of their tours.  "Rather than focusing specifically on nature or charity, CBT is meant to benefit the community and its environments as a whole."  Click HERE to read more about this.

I literally loved every minute of this!  I highly recommend riding a boat through the Amazon!

This was one of my favorite pictures from this part of the island.  It was one of many colorful boats I saw all along this journey.

One thing that I learned was that these people are super resourceful.  They showed us how they pulled these tree stumps from the river, cut them open, and then ate the worm like mollusks on the inside.

This is what it looked like when they split it open and they let us help them take some out of the log.  It may look gross but it was actually very cool.

This lady showed us how she would cook them up and add lemon juice and some spices to a bowl before they ate them.  Then we all got to try some.  Can you believe that I actually had one?!  I tried not to think about it and swallowed it whole but I didn't want to offend them.  This was their culture and something they did every day.  I felt honored that they let us be a part of it.

Another thing that they did to help with their survival was to catch crabs to eat.  They had traps all over the river.  These were fresh that they just bowled up for our meal.  Can you believe that this was the first time I ate crab and it was actually good!  I texted my husband, Bryan, a video of me eating it and he was shocked!  

They showed us how to use these wooded mallets to open break the shell and find the meat.  

Look closely at the picture below!  Yes, that is a monkey!!  It was hopping around from tree to tree directly above us.  What a wonderful treat!  It was the cutest little thing!

What a wonderful visit to this little village!  I learned a lot about this community in a short amount of time as well.  

Before we loaded up in our boats we had a little time to swim in the river.  Mel just told us to watch out for stingrays.  We saw a puffer fish near our feet, which was kind of cool.

This was the cute area they set up to feed us.  The people were such kind hosts to our group.  They went out of their way to make sure it was special.

Another beautiful picture of the scenery.

More and more boats.  A picture says a thousand words but I'm not sure what it is saying here.  I really wish I would have had more time to talk to the people here and learn more about their day to day lives.   There is so much we can learn from another culture if we take time to stop and listen.

We took the boats back to a beach to spend the next few hours.

The sand was so soft!

We had lunch at this yummy restaurant.  Of course, I had chicken.

What a great group of people!  I love learning more about them every day!

Coconut water fresh from a coconut is amazing!

Um, yes, I got to ride on a water buffalo!  One of the best memories that I have from this island.  

This was the view from the beach looking up at the area where we had our lunch.

We are finally headed back to our hotel for the night.  We will be staying here for the next 4 nights.  There are 4 of us to a room, which should be better than 11 of us!

I just love this city on Marajó.  It is called Soure.