Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
AMAZON TIME ZONES
Remember, there are three
time zones
in the Amazon region. Belém and eastern Pará are on the
same time as the rest of the coast, except from October to February when Bahia and the states of
the Southeast and the South switch to “summer time”, leaving Belém an hour behind. At the Rio
Xingu, about halfway west across Pará, the clocks go back an hour to Manaus time. Tabatinga,
Rio Branco and Acre, in the extreme west of the Amazon, are another hour behind again.
Amapá
, a small state on the northern bank of the Amazon opposite Belém, is a
poor and little-visited area, although it offers the opportunity of an adventurous
overland route to French Guiana and on into Suriname, Guyana and Venezuela.
Apart from Belém and the area around it, the most interesting section of the eastern
Amazon is the western part of Pará state, where the regional centre is
Santarém
and
the neighbouring beach village of
Alter do Chão
is one of the most beautiful spots in
the Amazon.
Connections in the region are pretty straightforward, in that you have
very few choices. The main throughway between Belém and Manaus is still the
Amazon, with a stop at
Monte Alegre
, set amid a stunning landscape of floodplains
and flat-topped mesas housing some of South America's most important yet
unexplored archeological sites. Nearby are the highly unusual towns of
Fordlândia
and
Belterra
mimicking downtown America; both founded by automobile tycoon
Henry Ford at the beginning of the twentieth century in a doomed attempt to
transform the area into a rubber production powerhouse.
An arbitrary border, a line on paper through the forest, divides the state of Pará from
the western Amazon. Encompassing the states of
Amazonas
,
Rondônia
,
Acre
and
Roraima
, the western Amazon is dominated by the big river and its tributaries even
more than the east. This is a remote and poorly serviced region representing the heart
of the world's largest rainforest. The northern half of the forest is drained by two large
rivers, the gigantic Rio Negro and its major a
uent, the Rio Branco. Travelling north
from Manaus the dense rainforest phases into wooded savannahs, before the mysterious
mountains of Roraima rise precipitously at the border with Venezuela and Guyana. To
the south, the rarely visited Madeira, Purús and Juruá rivers, all huge and important in
their own way, meander through the forests from the prime rubber region of Acre and
the rampantly colonized state of Rondônia.
The hub of this area is undoubtedly
Manaus
, more or less at the junction of three
great rivers - the Solimões/Amazonas, the Negro and the Madeira - which, between
them, support the world's greatest surviving forest. There are few other settlements of
any real size. In the north,
Boa Vista
, capital of Roraima, lies on an overland route to
Venezuela. South of the Rio Amazonas there's
Porto Velho
, capital of Rondônia, and,
further west,
Rio Branco
, the main town in the relatively unexplored rubber-growing
state of Acre - where the now famous Chico Mendes lived and died, fighting for a
sustainable future for the forest.
GETTING AROUND
THE AMAZON
From Porto Velho
From Porto Velho the Transamazônica
continues into Acre and the quirky town of Rio Branco, from
where the BR-317 has been paved all the way to Puerto
Maldonado in the Peruvian Amazon, with road links on to
Cusco and the Pacific coast beyond. Access is easy from here
into Bolivia, too; and, from Porto Velho, the paved BR-364
offers fast roads south to Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brasília and
the rest of Brazil.
BY CAR
From Manaus
Travel is never easy or particularly
comfortable in the western Amazon. From Manaus it's
possible to go by bus to Venezuela or Boa Vista, which is just
twelve hours or so on the tarmacked BR-174 through the
stunning tropical forest zone of the Waimiris tribe, with over
fifty rickety wooden bridges en route. You can also head east
to the Amazon river settlement of Itacoatiara. The BR-319
road from the south bank close to Manaus down to Porto
requires 4WD vehicles, having been repossessed by the rains
and vegetation for most of its length.
BY BOAT
The rivers are the traditional and still very much dominant
