Belem Waterfront
Trip Start
Nov 13, 2006
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9
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Trip End
May 23, 2007
Belem, Brazil
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
We landed in Belem, which is a city in the northern part of Brazil. It is the capital and also the biggest city of the state of Para. Its metropolitan area has approximately 2.09 million inhabitants.
It is the entrance gate and, together with Manaus, the most important city in the Brazilian Amazon region (the Amazon runs east from Manaus to Belem and then to the Atlantic Ocean).
As you can see we walked to the downtown dock area where all the fishing boats come in to unload their fish and crabs. The southern channel of mouth of the Amazon lies just to the north of the city. The city was founded on January 12, 1616 by Captain Francisco Caldeiras de Castelo Branco, who was sent by the Portuguese crown to defend the region against French, Dutch and British colonization attempts.
