MARABÁ, on the banks of the Rio Tocantins, almost 600km south of Belém and 400km north of Araguaina on the Belém–Brasília road, is often described as the worst of all Amazon towns. It’s the market centre for the region, and also the place where the ranchers, construction workers, truckers and gold-miners come for entertainment: […]

The southern half of Pará, whose main towns are Marabá and Altamira, has virtually nothing to recommend it to the traveller: largely denuded of forest, it is now a jumble of unproductive ranches, poor peasants and depressing towns. When it hits the headlines it is always for the wrong reasons, such as the assassination […]

A quiet town with pleasant beaches where you can relax under the shade of ancient mango trees, SOURE is where most visitors head for at first. The Hotel Soure, just a few blocks from the docks in the town centre, is very basic, while the Hotel Marajó, Praça Inhangaiba (T91/3741-1396), and the Hotel Ilha […]

The Ilha do Marajó is a vast, 40,000-square-kilometre island of largely uninhabited mangrove swamps and beaches in the Amazon river delta opposite Belém. Roughly the size of Switzerland, it is by some way the largest river island in the world. Created by the accretion of silt and sand over millions of years, it’s a […]

Airlines Varig now at the airport only; TAM, Av. Assis de Vasconcelos 265 T91/3212-2166. Belém has some international connections for the adventurous; Air Surinam three times weekly to Paramaribo via Cayenne, and connections to Georgetown, and Air Caraibe three times weekly to Cayenne and the French Antilles, with Air France connections to Paris from […]

As you might expect from the richest freshwater ecosystem in the world, fish takes pride of place in Amazonian cooking, and you’ll come across dozens of species. There are many kinds of huge, almost boneless fish, including pirarucu, tambaqui and filhote, which come in dense slabs sometimes more like meat, and are delicious grilled […]

Belém is a great place to eat out and get acquainted with the distinctive dishes of the Amazon region. Estação das Docas and the Docas area around Avenida Visconde Souza Franco are good places to start, and they are two of the city’s main focuses for nightlife as well. Belém has the best ice-cream […]