“It was high time to take Atlas on another adventure, something on the order of Bananal Island, and it didn’t take long to settle on just such an opportunity, another isle no less.  Belém sits across from Isla de Marajó, the largest delta island in the world, bigger than Switzerland.

 

“Marajó is very much a sedimentary island, built up over millions of years by tons and tons of Amazonian flotsam, detrius, backwash, and dirt.” [pp. 155-156, 158, ‘To Belém & Back’]

From Belém, we took a three hour ferry ride across the mighty Pará River, which debouches the Amazon into the Atlantic.  It takes much less time, here, to see it for yourself.

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“After I dried off a rejuvenated, if spent, Atlas with his towel, we boarded Joãozinho’s lumbering bus of dreams and rumbled back to the hotel, on a low-lying island afloat in the glittering expanse of the Amazonian delta.  Breaking barriers, I realized, is a force as natural as the Amazon’s onrushing ability to clear detrius, free blockages, and send it all out to sea.” [p.167]