Amazon Things To Do

With a name that warns “Check the Weight,” this fish and produce market by the river contains 2,000 stalls that sell just about everything that can be culled, extracted, or fished out of the Amazon basin. The market’s hodgepodge architecture reflects a series of additions and expansions that date to the 18th century.

The traditional restaurant Lá em Casa, with reputably the best Amazonian cuisine anywhere, has opened a branch at the Estação das Docas (Docks Station), which includes a strip of fashionable bars and restaurants that are part of a downtown urban renewal scheme. Regional fish, like tambaquí and pirarucu, are prepared in several ways. Another specialty is a duck stew call

A couple of hours by boat from Belém, Marajó features calm beaches with sand dunes cut through by small streams. Concentrations of colonial buildings dot the island. Buffalo, raised for meat, cheese, and even transportation, are ubiquitous; flocks of scarlet ibis are also in evidence. Marajó pottery and ceramics are known throughout Brazil. Many working farms, like the Fazenda

The island’s down-home eateries, often located in a wing of the cook’s house, are legendary – featuring both fish and buffalo meat. One good choice is Delicias da Nalva.

This elegant opera house made of materials imported from Europe is the most impressive monument to the brief period when Manaus was one of the world’s richest cities, during the rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

While in Manaus, don’t miss the “meeting of the waters,” where the dark waters of the Negro River and the milky waters of the Solimões come together but –because of density, water speed, and composition – do not mix, painting a swirling mosaic in the water. The Brazilian agency Viverde runs excursions to this spot.

Peacock bass fishing is attracting huge numbers of anglers to the Amazon. U.S.-based Highroller Adventures offers weeklong fishing excursions out of Manaus utilizing a riverboat hotel, isolated lodges, or mobile cabins that can penetrate into hard-to-reach spots. Even out in the bush, the accommodations are first class.

Many of the eco-lodges scattered about the Amazon are very good. Uacari is a floating lodge set on a calm lagoon in the middle of the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve. As a flooded rainforest, Mamirauá attracts more wildlife and birds than most other parts of the Amazon. In another part of the reserve, a fisheries management project aims to preserve the pirarucu, the world&r