As I tease the reader at book’s start:
“Belém, a decaying colonial city at the mouth of the monstrous Amazon River, the capital of Pará, and one of Brazil’s oldest ports. I like places that time has passed by, for no better reason than I identify with them.” [To Belém & Back, p.6]
After much anticipation and some hardship, the arrival was hard to beat:
“It is difficult to exaggerate my stunned delight upon reading the roadside sign, ‘Welcome to Belém, the City of Mango Trees,’ for we had made it at long last, without breakdown or mishap. Months of planning had preceded this moment, along with a growing sense of impending peril, if not catastrophe, yet all of that seemed to fade away in the here and now, as rain washes away dust.” [p.139]
[please hover over images for captions]
![“The Beira-Rio Hotel, on the banks of the Rio Guarná tributary, is by Brazlian standards nothing short of a pet paradise... [with] various boarded walkways out to the restaurant, and docks on stilts over the river’s edge.” [p.141-142]](https://backroadsbrazil.com/wp-content/gallery/belem/Para704-017w.jpg "“The Beira-Rio Hotel, on the banks of the Rio Guarná tributary, is by Brazlian standards nothing short of a pet paradise... [with] various boarded walkways out to the restaurant, and docks on stilts over the river’s edge.” [p.141-142]")
![“[T]he wrought-iron Mercado de Ferro, which was imported piecemeal from England in the 19th century, [contains the] Ver-o-Peso, which is one of the world great markets, commercializing a fraction of the Amazon’s unimaginable cornucopia.” [p.152]](https://backroadsbrazil.com/wp-content/gallery/belem/Para704-026w.jpg "“[T]he wrought-iron Mercado de Ferro, which was imported piecemeal from England in the 19th century, [contains the] Ver-o-Peso, which is one of the world great markets, commercializing a fraction of the Amazon’s unimaginable cornucopia.” [p.152]")
![Catedral de Sé, fronting Frei Brandão Plaza. “It is an old square only recently transformed into Belém’s showpiece, as the city for centuries turned its back on the river whose banks, one can imagine, were sordid, dirty, disease-sponges.” [p.143]](https://backroadsbrazil.com/wp-content/gallery/belem/Para704-055w.jpg "Catedral de Sé, fronting Frei Brandão Plaza. “It is an old square only recently transformed into Belém’s showpiece, as the city for centuries turned its back on the river whose banks, one can imagine, were sordid, dirty, disease-sponges.” [p.143]")
![Museu de Arte Sacra. “Near the Equator there is a damp, pre-historic quality to the sunlight, with both an intensity and puckish softening that suggests even the properties of light are unfixable.” [p.144]](https://backroadsbrazil.com/wp-content/gallery/belem/Para704-061w.jpg "Museu de Arte Sacra. “Near the Equator there is a damp, pre-historic quality to the sunlight, with both an intensity and puckish softening that suggests even the properties of light are unfixable.” [p.144]")
“I had already heard of about Belém’s abundant colonial charms, its dilapidated rubber-boom era structures, its intriguing mix of tropical and equatorial, of sweet and salty ennui, its regal place at the tail waters of the humid, damp, and life-stunned Amazon, a major port and gateway to and from the immense jungle of our imagination.” [p.141]