ISABM Belem

Our Journal

Belem - November

The barge had trouble docking because another barge full of wood had broken in two and workers were trying to use a crane to salvage what they could. We drove through 20 miles of sprawl before we got to the more picturesque center. The old town is dilapidated with small pockets of restoration. Tourism seems to be confined to the dock area where they have built of a strip around the fish and vegetable market. We had a guy from Belem, Sydney, in Alter do Chao. He came and walked us all over town and seemed to know someone around every corner. Belem was right in the middle of political campaigns which means lots of free music concerts. Ana Julia, from President Lula’s workers party was setting up for a march right in front of our hotel so we joined in the march. The communists of Belem do things a little differently than Lenin and Mao may have hoped. Their march was really a dance across town with a giant moving sound system. After dancing across town we arrived at an outdoor music concert with our new comrades. Matt performed the matador and bull dance. I ran around screaming for the proletariat to rise up. We turned down Sydney’s offer to go to strip clubs and walked back to the hotel. We sat at a café across the street that had as they say here “movimento”. In other words there are ladies of the night looking for young men like ourselves. Three quickly sat with us, one quite pregnant, another who spoke some English. We didn’t see much hope in saving the mother so decided to better the community by teaching some English. After a while the quicker bilingual one of the bunch got a little nasty – always a good time to start throwing beer around (see photo).

The next day we tried at being tourists proper and saw some great Botanical gardens with more turtles than you could ever hope to congregate in one place. The aquarium opened our eyes to all the river life we had been swimming next to in Alter do Chao – poisonous rays that conceive without a mate, electric eels. piranhas, snakes, and a kind of eel that goes through a sex change midlife. The collection of monkeys, birdlife, and turtles was incredible, and the big cat cages depressing as always.

Another afternoon the Cerpa brewery returned our call and agreed to allow us to tour the plant. There was a definite Bob and Doug feeling to this place. A German immigrant built the brewery 50 years ago and still lives on the premises. The line works 24 hours a day for a week and stops for a week of maintenance. They said if the line stops for any reason, the owner calls from his house 100 yards away within two minutes. All ingredients are imported from Europe in massive proportions. The cafeteria is a five star operation and all employees get two meals a shift. They have their own water treatment system that eliminates waist before flowing into the river. This was not the lax latin operation we were expecting and we decided against trying the mouse in the bottle trick. We got to sample a cold one straight out of a giant tube and had pastries and juice at the cafeteria before cabbing back to the center.

We were having a hard time finding things to do in this big city so we decided to drive on after a few days. Our last day we heard about music concerts, Halloween parties, and soccer games that we didn’t know about. We had been spoiled in the Santarem area by having city guides. Right before pulling away from the hotel an old man spooked me by begging me not to travel the road we were about to drive and warned of terrible assaults in the middle of the day. A couple of hours later fighting truck traffic I was wondering how the bandits would stop so many cars and trucks. He should have warned me about the lack of passing opportunities and the giant trash truck in front of me that coated me in some nasty sticky liquid. Sometimes I forget what anomalies we are, but the stares in small towns quickly remind me. Towns seem to take on characters, some friendly, some respectfully shy, some seedy and threatening. We’ve learned not to expect too much from that next dot on the map and there always seem to be well known established spots to spend the night. By late afternoon we were ready to stop and stopped for gas in a seedy looking town. Guys quickly mulled around the bikes but no one made eye contact or spoke to us. Not a good place to stop for the night no matter how cute the girl working behind the counter was who gave me my change in candy. One mile down we crossed a river and arrived at a picturesque little town with sculpted bushes lining the main strip, the highway. We spent the rest of the afternoon get haircuts and doing what the locals do, hanging out on benches and watching cars go by.

The next morning we hit a stretch of dirt road that rattled my boxes on the bike. We rolled past farmland. Houses had dirt walls supporting old wooden colonial doorways and windows. An hour later we were back on asphalt and stopped for lunch in the plaza of a small town. At the same restaurant there were about 20 Americans, evangelical missionaries from Florida. Their priest talked to us for a long time about different church building, youth exchanges, and agricultural advising programs they do in the community. He put his hands on our shoulders and prayed for us. A local boy in their group had lots of question for us and we spent out lunch trying to field them. A local man helped out and then walked us out to the bikes. I noticed a flyer on a post with his face on it. He had run for mayor and lost a month before. His wife showed up on a bike. Goodbyes were said and we rode on to a ferry crossing an hour away. While waiting in line we noticed Matt’s boots had been swiped off his bike, probably when we were being blessed. Crab fishermen were selling bundles of crabs all tied together. They stick their hands a couple of feet into mud to catch these large clawed crabs. The ferry across we met a 19 year old bicyclist on his second trip around Brazil. He travels from school to school exchanging a place to sleep for juggling performances for the kids.