Belém

What an adventure today was. Belem is a tender port. Actually, we tender in the city of Icoaraci, which is one hour from Belem by shuttle. We were first to board the tender boat at 9:00 AM. Our tour was suppose to start at 10:AM. Brazilian authority did not allow HAL to run their tender boats. Instead we had to use local very "rustic" boats. When we got to the shore, there we lots of people: locals that came from the ferry or were going on the ferry, tourists, vendors and just people hanging around. Somebody told us to get on the shuttle to go to the main port. That is exactly what we did.
In about 5 minutes I suspected we made a mistake. We should have looked for our private tour bus. Oh well. It was too late.
After riding for one hour on that shuttle, we arrived at the center of the city. There was a mall and some restaurants. Since we are not interested in this stuff, we had an option to go back on the ship.
I decided to call the main office of the tour company. The gentleman answered the phone and after I explained what happened, told me to call him back in 5 min. Thank you T-Mobile!
After calling back, he told us to get taxi or Uber and go to Emilio Goeldi Museum and the tour bus will be waiting for us. Since we did not have local currency, we took Uber.
After riding for 15 min we arrived at the museum. Unfortunately, it was closed. What a surprise! Now what should we do? Nobody around spoke English. After few minutes our tour bus arrived. We we so happy to see it.

We proceeded to a different entrance of the museum. They open it for tour groups. Since it is Monday the museum is closed for everyone else.
Actually it is very different kind of museum. It is combination of batanical garden and a zoo. It was founded in 1866 and is pretty interesting.

Our second stop was Republica Square with Opera Theater. We could not go inside, but the building is beautiful. The building and the whole city have seen better days.

The next stop was Catholic Church, Basilica of Our Lady of Nazareth, a copy of St. Paul’s church in Rome built during the rubber boom era at the
beginning of the 20th century beautiful inside and outside and in a very good shape.

The next stop was the same place as the shuttle bus dropped us off. We walked a little, had an 🍨. We decided on two flavors: chocolate and something else. Something else was very delicious but the chocolate was not chocolate. It was Acai ice wecream. It tasted like fish.

After that we got on our bus and one hour later were back on the tender boat.

Belem use to be very rich city during rubber boom, but now it is crumbling. Roads are bad, buildings are in horrible shape, unemployment is very high and crime is high too.
Belem is located in the delta of Amazon river. It is always very hot and raining every day in the afternoon.
It is a big city of 1.5 mil people. People are very nice.
After visiting place like this , we appreciate the place we live. You realize how lucky we are.Lue lisää