Tag Archives: Santarem

Taking A Boat On The Tapajos River Between Itaituba & Santarem

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Once you have touched down in Brazil, preferably at Manaus and flown onwards to Santarem; you aren’t done yet!  You still need to get to Itaituba and get a permit for the Parque Nacional da Amazônia and drive out there.  The most pleasant way to travel is by speedboat down the Tapajos.  We did this journey in the direction of Itaituba to Santarem since we had arrived in Itaituba by bus from Mato Grosso.

I don’t speak Portuguese but from what I can tell, this is the official blog of the company that runs the launches.  I did my best with Google Translate!

Ships to Itaituba.
All days out boats from Santarem to Itaituba carrying cargo, packages and passengers. They leave at 16:00 (only on Sunday leaves at 14:00 hours). The vessels are castor and are usually boat medium and large making this trip that lasts about 17:00 usually.

Has the boats that depart at 13:00 hours and arrive in Santarem Itaituba about 21:30 the same day.

 

This is the ticket office in Itaituba.  In Sept 2012, we paid R$65 each (around $35).  I think it has gone up to R$70 now.

Lancha motor Princesa do Tapajós sai todas as 2ª-feira, 4ª-feira e 6ª-feira.  (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)

Lancha motor Veloz sai todas as 3ª-feira, 5ª-feira e domingo. (não prestamos serviços para essa embarcação). (Wednesday, Friday, Sunday).

I could not find any reference to who sails on a Monday.

***UPDATED TRANSLATION***

Harvson3 has kindly provided a proper translation of the Portuguese I was trying to use Google Translate on.  This is the correct version.  As you can see, Google Translate sometimes leaves a lot to be desired but it’s usually all we have to go on.  Thank you Harvson3!

One small correction of the above:
2a feira (also written segunda-feira) is Monday, 4a feira is Wednesday, sexta-feira (6a feira) is Friday.

terca (3) and quinta (5) are Tuesday and Thursday.

My translation of the above paragraphs:

Every day, boats leave Santarem for Itaituba carrying cargo, packages, and passengers. The boats leave at 4 PM in the afternoon (only on Monday they leave at 2 PM). The ships rotate and are generally boats of medium to large size that do trips that last usually around 17 hours generally [sic].

There are boats that leave Santarem at 1 PM and arrive in Itaituba around 9:30 PM on the same day.

Lancha motor just means “motorboat,” akin to the smaller boat you took.

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You can buy snacks and drinks on the boat but we bought some sandwiches, snacks and drinks at a small cafe across the street before leaving.

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The larger boats also go to Santarem but are much slower.  This type of boat also travels the Amazon between Tabatinga-Manaus-Santarem-Belem.  Our launch was much smaller, see the difference in the photos.  You will have seats assigned but if the boat isn’t full just change seats to wherever you want.  The whole trip takes about 8 hours.

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The journey down the Tapajos is very scenic and pleasant.  You will pass by Fordlândia which is a now-abandoned, prefabricated industrial town established in the Amazon Rainforest in 1928 by American industrialist Henry Ford to secure a source of cultivated rubber for the automobile manufacturing operations of the Ford Motor Company in the United States.  In the map below, Fordlândia is where the A in the bubble is.  The red dot on PA-435 is the town of Aveiro.  This is where you would get off if you wanted to try to find Golden Conures along the Cupari River but you would need a guide and chartered boat to do that.

Tapajos River

Here are some photos showing the whole journey from Itaituba to Santarem.

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The sunset was amazing!

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This is where we disembarked in Santarem.  It’s a ways out of town, I think the taxi was around R$10-15 to get to downtown where we finally found a room at the Sandis Hotel.

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Santarem – Where The Amazon Meets The Tapajos

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Santarem is a major port on the Amazon River and most people who are doing the 5 day trip between Manaus and Belem will spend at least a few hours here but it’s worth stopping off for a few days.  It’s easier to get here than you may think despite the few choices you have.

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You can easily get to Manaus with miles.  From there, depending on when you travel, you may be able to get all the way to Santarem with miles.  TAM is the variable.  Until mid 2014, it will be a member of Star Alliance, then it will be joining OneWorld along with it’s new partner as LATAM.

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WHERE TO STAY

We arrived in Santarem by boat from Itaituba which is the opposite direction you will be traveling in if you fly in from the USA.  The boat arrived around 9pm-ish and I had a list of hotels that had been recommended by Lonely Planet and Rough Guides.  We grabbed a taxi at the dock and asked to go to one of them.  The driver obliged but it looked deserted.  The next one I asked for was also deserted.  Not looking good!  We drove around the corner and stopped at  the Sandis Hotel which had not been in any of my guidebooks.  I asked the driver to wait while I ran in and checked the price.  It was cheap enough and looked brand new so Sandis it was!   Room was clean, the breakfast was included and pretty good and I loved the bird artwork on the walls in the lobby!  The location is great, walking distance to al the most interesting places in town, several restaurants are nearby.

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Trip Advisor has a few other hotels listed, make sure the reviews are recent or you may find the hotel has closed down!  Those staying longer may prefer to take a bus to Alter do Chao.  Everyone seems to love this Amazon-style beach resort town and if our itinerary hadn’t been so jam-packed with birding excursions, we probably would have spent a couple days here for R&R.  Gil Serique lives in Alter do Chao so it’s a good idea to contact him if you plan to visit.

WHERE TO EAT

Brazil has these really cool restaurants where you load up your plate and pay by the kilogram.  Piracaia came highly recommended and we weren’t disappointed with our lunch here.

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WHAT TO DO AND SEE

The sights of Santarem can be easily seen in one day which is great if you are just making a connection to or from Amazonia National Park or other ports along the Amazon.  It’s a pleasant town to walk around and most of what you want to see is either along the corniche or within a couple of blocks.

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No prizes for guessing why I love the phone booths here!

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There are a few souvenir shops along the corniche, a pedestrian shopping street and a local market where you can buy hammocks.  I really wanted one of those large vases with a macaw n it but didn’t think I could get it home in one piece!

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The Museu Dica Frazao has some stunning costumes inside.  Entry is by donation and some items are for sale but that pretty fan I wanted was unfortunately not one of them.  There are some very sad forlorn looking pet parrots in the garden, how I wish I could have set them free in the national park!

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MOVING ON

The airport is about an hour by local bus.  We had a flight in the wee hours to Belem and ended up hanging around the airport all night because we caught the last bus out there and had nothing better to do anyways.  If you’re stuck, there is a space under the staircase that goes up to the cafe.  We camped out for a few hours using our backpacks as pillows and sarongs for sheets.

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Golden Conure AKA Queen Of Bavaria Conure AKA Ararajuba (Guaruba guarouba)

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This week, I would like to introduce you to my all-time favourite bird.   In their native land, Brazil; they are known as Ararajuba.  The Golden Parakeet or Golden Conure, (Guaruba guarouba), formerly classified as (Aratinga guarouba),is a species of Neotropical parrot. Sometimes known as the Queen of Bavaria Conure, it is the only species (monotypic) in the genus Guaruba.

Its plumage is mostly bright yellow, hence its common name, but it also possesses green remiges.  It lives in the drier, upland rainforests in Amazonian Brazil, and is threatened by deforestation and flooding, and also by the now-illegal trapping of wild individuals for the pet trade.  It is an endangered species listed on CITES appendix I.

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Mature pair of Golden Conures at the Emilio Goeldi Zoo in Belem

Juvenile Golden Conure at the Emilio Goeldi Zoo in Belem

Juvenile Golden Conure at the Emilio Goeldi Zoo in Belem

Flock of wild Golden Conures in Amazonia National Park

Flock of wild Golden Conures in Amazonia National Park

Getting to see them in the wild is no easy feat!  Their range is in a very remote area of Brazil and there are no eco-lodges or established eco-tourism in the area.  The full story of my journey to see them can be seen in the April 2013 issue of Flock Talk by the World Parrot Trust.  Scroll down and click on the PDF.  The World Parrot Trust also has a species profile on this beautiful bird.  At the end of this series, I will upload the text from this article written by myself with more photos and hyperlinks to all the posts I am doing to show you how to do this trip for yourself.

This is the range of Golden Conures as shown on Golden Conure Survival Fund. (For those who are curious, I did get a glimpse of a Hawkheaded Parrot at Cristalino).

Range of Golden Conures

The range of Golden Conures extends far westward into the Amazon basin reaching all the way to the right bank of the Madeira Rio in Amazonas state; the bird reaches as far east as the Gurupi in Maranhâo state. It is found in much higher density (almost ten times) within the confines of the current study area. This coincides almost directly with the heaviest deforestation zones (Hartley 8).

The Golden Conures are distributed in pockets strewn across northeastern Brazil, south of the Amazon River, in eastern Pará and northern Maranhâo to the western edge of Tapajós (Low 183). Their range has been reduced by as much as 30% in the last 2 to 3 decades.

In the map below, the red dots represent the airports (L-R:  Manaus, Itaituba, Santarem, Belem) that are relevant to the journey.  The yellow highlighted areas represent areas in which I found documented sightings of Golden Conures during my research.  The highlighted area south of Itaituba is the Amazonia National Park where I ultimately got to see them.  The yellow area between Santarem and Itaituba marked “CR” is roughly the location of the Cupari River in which the birds have been sighted by Gil Serique, a famous Brazilian guide.  The yellow area marked “CX” is roughly the location of Caxiuanã National Forest.  Finally, the other yellow area near the Tucurui Dam has had sightings of Golden Conures, though they may have been driven out by the deforestation in the area.

When I first started planning my trip, I had originally hoped to go to Caxiuana.  At one point, they did have tourist accommodation but they stopped this several years ago.  They still host groups of scientists, biologists and researchers.  It seemed like it would be easy enough to get there from Belem and once there, there would be guides to help us find the birds.  Directions to get there (in case they start accepting tourists again):  The scientific station is located in the municipality of Melgaço, 350 km west of Belém, the capital city of the state of Pará.  The trip to the scientific station has to be made in two stages. The first stage can be made by flying or traveling by commercial ship (12 hours) from Belém to the interior city of Breves along the south of the island of Marajó. For the second stage, one boards a motor launch in Breves run by the Goeldi Museum. The launch continues for 9 hours through the Melgaço Bay, located in the Rio Anapú basin, passes the villages of Melgaço and Portel, and up to Caxiuanã Bay. This last leg of the journey can also be made by speed boat, reducing the time of the journey to only 4 hours.

Gil Serique who lives in Alter do Chão – a beautiful beach town near Santarem can lead tourists to the Cupari River area and he knows a lot about these birds.  My husband and I couldn’t afford to hire a charter boat and hire him for several days but anyone who has a group would be well advised to do so.  There are no accommodations in this area so most people would be sleeping in hammocks either on the boat or ashore.

I finally chose Amazonia National Park since it was accessible by public transport and they have a bunkhouse at the Urua guard station.  This is the trip I will be blogging about in hopes that others who care about these birds can see them before it’s too late.

Although I managed to get some photos of the wild Golden Conures, I didn’t have time to get video as it all happened so fast.  Luckily there is a professional clip on YouTube (Portuguese language) with some amazing footage of these stunning birds.  You also get a glimpse of my guide, Gilberto da Silva. Even as I watch this 8 months after my trip, my heart still skips a beat as I remember my brief but unforgettable encounter with the Ararajubas of Brazil!