0001 COTIJUBA ISLAND WEST COAST

PART 1

ANANINDEUA-BELÉM-ICOARACI BUS RIDE – ICOARACI PIER

I woke up early and rode the bus for about forty minutes, from Ananindeua to Belém, and then to Icoaraci, a district from the capital of Pará. That’s a 45-minute bus ride. Ananindeua is a city located in the metropolitan area of Belém. That’s when you arrive at a pier, where you can watch the busy routine of the merchants, fishers and marketers. Wooden riverboats arrive here with goods and products from the towns, river settlements and villages along the mighty rivers. Once at the quay, you can buy a boat ticket at a ticket box placed right by the pier. You pay around five reais and walk along concrete pier to it’s end  (142m). Then you get into a 10-15m-boat (called ‘pô-pô-pô’ in Portuguese, as a reference to the repetitive noise noise of it’s engine. If you want to take the larger boat, you pay a little less (it sounds strange at first) but the explanation is simple: the larger boat sails only once a day. It leaves at nine in the morning and returns at about five in the afternoon. The smaller ones leave at every half an hour or so.