Boat trip up the Amazon and Monte Alegre

The next segment of the mini-vacation to the Santarém region was a trip to see the rock paintings of Monte Alegre. To get there, we returned to Santarém and boarded a passenger boat for the 6 hour trip down the Amazon. Air travel is becoming cheaper and more affordable, but only the bigger cities are reached by plane and the majority of people still travel by boat, even along the major routes such as Manaus – Belém (5 days) or Santarém – Belém (2 days). Passengers sling their hammocks along hooks and camp out for the duration of the journey. The aft of the two story boat had a little bar with cold beer.


The town of Monte Alegre doesn’t have much going for it, but what it does have is very worthwhile. In the vicinity of the township are hundreds of rock paintings dating back 12,000 years, which means that they are the earliest known signs of human habitation in the Amazon basin.


You have to have a guide to visit the sites since they are only accessible with a 4x4 truck. The landscape was dry and hilly, very unlike the rest of the Amazon, and reminded me more of the cerrado around Brasília and the caprock of West Texas (except for the vegetation). After the six hour tour, we spent the rest of the day in Monte Alegre doing nothing and took the evening boat back to Santarém. The return trip was much more crowded but better for sleeping since the hammocks didn’t swing as much. Since we were going up stream, the journey lasted around 8 hours. After walking around Santarém in the morning, we went to the airport for the 1 hour flight back to Belém.