We visited a town today that Henry Ford built during the rubber boom, it was like walking through some American suburb of 100 years ago, with Brazilians in all the windows. Little square houses with little square yards and little white picket fences. We have not seen anything even remotely close to it in our time here.

The town of Santarém itself is integrally tied to the American Civil War as 46 colonial families moved here in the 1850´s and brought new agricultural equipment as well as cotton and watermelons. They also built a steam powered automobile in1872, 20 years before Peugeot showed up in the south of Brazil.

We learned much of this information from a man they call, "the Walking Library", as we sat in the house he built himself 70 years ago. He took us to the local museum and explained the differences between the two tribes that had inhabited this area; he showed us some of their artifacts as well as gave us the background on several local legends, including that of the "Amazons", a tribe consisting only of women. It has been difficult to keep all of this information straight, but it has been a fascinating couple of days.

At first, it did not seem as if we would be given access to the rainforest. It's not like you can just go walk in and give yourself a tour, you'd probably make it about 10 feet before being stuck by a thousand thorns and then consumed by ants. We were, however, taken in to a state protected area with roads cut for our walking convenience.

Being the middle of the day, we didn't get to see much in the way of wildlife, but did manage to spot some amazing insect life, leaf-cutter ants of course, some great looking spiders and a giant butterfly (our guide did not seem to think it was of the famed Morphous blue variety, although that is what it looked like to me) that resembled a flying blue leaf. We ate fruit off the forest floor and had a nice little picnic lunch as we tried to get a lizard to eat a caterpillar that was about half its size. It wasn't as hungry as we wanted it to be, or maybe it just knew something about that caterpillar that we didn't.

After the forest, we took a great dirt road in the pouring rain and our VW van performed admirably, as it didn't get stuck or slide off the road one time. We cut open a rubber tree and made rubber strips instantly. Pretty cool. We ate a marvelous lunch with at least 4 types of fish, then went swimming in the Rio Tocatins, which meets up with the Amazon in front of Santarém and in fact, forms another meeting of the waters where two different colored rivers flow together for some ways before mixing. Just upriver from where we swam, you could not see the other side although I never heard what the actual distance was. All in all, it turned out to be my favorite day so far, smelling the life of the forest in the air and feeling the magnitude of so much water around us. I believe we are getting back on board a boat tomorrow and heading the final 500 or so miles down the river to Belem to who knows what.

Whatever is turns out to be, I can't wait, although I am sure I will have to return to Santarém in future trips as there is just something magical about this place and the people who live here. Hope you are all well.

Jungle love,