About Santarém

Other Locations

Ancient Indian Cultures

Places of Interest

The Waterfront

Alter do Chão

Caverna da Pedra Pintada

Fordlândia

Goldmines

National Forests

Related Links

Santarém Photos

Fordlândia

Caverna da Pedra Pintada

Goldmining

Alter do Chão

Santarém

Santarém is located along the Amazon river, half-way between Manaus and Santarém – where the clear green waters of the Tapajós merge with the murky brown waters of the Amazon.

Santarém is the third-largest city on the Brazilian Amazon. But it is very unlike the big cities of Manaus and Belém. With only 60,000 people, it looks and feels more like a frontier town from an old Western movie. Famous cowboys, like John Wayne and Randolph Scott, would feel at home here. The town has red dirt roads, rough wooden shacks, and the atmosphere of the "supermercado" (supermarket) is more like that of an old-style General Store. It seems fitting that Santarém was settled in 1867 by 110 Confederate refugees fleeing the South after the American Civil War.

The farms around the Santarém look to be very recent – as if they’ve only just been cleared out of the rainforest. The land is hot and dusty, and all around the town there are big black vultures, called Urubús, which scavenge through rubbish along the streets and riverfront. The sight of these vultures is very unnerving – as I wander down the city’s main street I can spy a huge group of them watching me from the roof of a nearby building. Another six or seven are even closer, perched along the top of a billboard.

Appearances are deceiving. Santarém looks like a new town which isn’t yet finished, but its much older than any New Zealand town or city. Before Europeans arrived, it was the centre of a thriving Indian culture, the Tapuiçu. The first European settlement was a Jesuit mission built in 1661. The present town grew up around this mission, and was officially named Santarém in 1758.

I will be visiting here to learn more about the area’s history, and about developments such as Fordlândia and nearby goldmines. Many locals wear heavy gold chains, and some readily talk about the fortunes that they've won and lost. Not far from Santarém is another town, called Alter do Chão – the most beautiful place that I’ve yet seen in Amazônia.

Ancient Indian Cultures

Santarém used to be the centre of a large Indian civilisation, but very little is known about how they lived because few of the Indians survived past the arrival of the Europeans. The first European explorers and settlers brought diseases with them, which made the Indians very sick – causing many to die. The Indians’ survival was also hampered by the fact that many of the first Europeans to visit here were slave raiders. They captured entire Indian tribes then transported them far away to live and work on plantations. However, the first explorer to arrive here reported that he saw prosperous Indian villages where the people raised turtles in riverside pens, and made fine pottery.

The ancient civilisation was almost completely forgotten, until 1922, when a rainstorm washed away part of a road and uncovered a treasure-trove of ancient stone tools and pottery. A more recent discovery is Caverna da Pedra Pintada which contains ancient Indian artefacts – some dated at over 11,000 years old.

Nearby Places of Interest

There are several places of interest in and around Santarém. These include:

• The Waterfront
  The waterfront along the front of the town is where you can see riverboats being loaded up. There are even floating petrol stations where the riverboats can fill up with fuel. There are markets along the waterfront selling fresh fruit, fish, dried shrimps, and other produce. Livestock is also exchanged here, so you might see interesting sights such as live chickens in cages, or farmers struggling to get a stubborn pigs onto the back of a truck.

• Alter do Chão
  Alter do Chão is a small town along the Tapajós river. The beauty of its clear lakes and white sand beaches meant that it became a sacred place for the local Indians. However, now it is a popular holiday and weekend destination for the people of Santarém.

• Caverna da Pedra Pintada.
  The area around Santarém is well-known to archaeologists and researchers for its rock paintings and artefacts belonging to earlier Amazonian cultures. The discoveries in Caverna da Pedra Pintada are particularly interesting because they are over 11,000 years old and indicate that people had adapted to life in Amazônia's tropical rainforests long before previously thought. [Related Article]

• Fordlândia
  A few hours up the Tapajós river from Santarém is a rubber plantation called Fordlândia. It was built by the famous car-maker, Henry Ford, during the 1930s. Ford tried creating a plantation similar to the successful rubber plantations of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Malaysia. It was intended to guarantee a cheap source of rubber for the Ford Motor Company. [More]

• Goldmines
  Goldmines are another recent development. Enormous deposits of gold was discovered along the Tapajós river, bringing tens of thousands of people into the area with hopes of making their fortune. The new goldmines caused problems with pollution and uncontrolled development of the region. [More]

• Floresta Nacional do Tapajós and Parque Nacional da Amazônia
  With development taking place all around the region, several areas have been set aside as reserves and nature areas. Floresta Nacional do Tapajós covers an area of 650,000 hectares, and Parque Nacional da Amazônia covers about a millions hectares. These are places where visitors can experience natural rainforests and see wild animals. Despite their huge size, the parks are generally under-resourced and operate with minimum staff (there are only four park rangers available to monitor the entire 1 million hectare Parque Nacional da Amazônia).