Finally arrived in Belem after a bit of a nightmare journey for me, I will not go into details but I got my first dose of food poisoning and some annoying kids behind kicking my seat and tapping me on the head whilst trying to sleep (yes it's funny the first few times). First impressions of Belem is that it's a bit of a tatty beaten up city, it's what I expected really but it's an essential stop gap before heading out into the Amazon.

Checked into hotel Unidos for 2 nights, a recommendation from the Lonely Planet. Nice medium sized rooms, good internet and even breakfast thrown in for good measure.

Amongst all the decaying streets, we managed to find a nice restaurant and bar area called estacao das docas, it was safe and policed by the tourist police. The restaurants all served a buffet, so we chose one that had unlimited chopp (draft beer) called Amazon River and was pretty good.

The next day, we booked the Amazon river boat from Belem to Santarem, Santarem being about half way to my final Amazon destination which is Manaus...so a good stop off as I have heard the river boat can be cramped, smelly and downright boring. As it turns out the boat that we booked didn't actually depart on the day we booked it for due to Good Friday and the next boat was a few days after that, so we decided to fly to Santarem and catch the river boat from there to Manaus.

Belem does have a few sights to see, an old fort, cathedral and marketplace. In the marketplace they were selling all sorts of rubbish, salted fish, fake football shirts and some poor chickens and ducks caged.

Unfortunately Lee had to have his birthday in Belem but I suppose it is better than celebrating it on a river boat! That night we headed to a nightclub which was recommend by a local Brazilian businessman who was staying in the same hotel as us. Once there, not forgetting tradition, I got Lee a few dirty drinks. As you cannot get Guinness or pints in Brazil, I ditched the dirty pint idea and just lined up the drinks instead...half pint of lager, a double shot of vodka, a double shot of Bacardi then another half pint of lager...then to wash it down a nice vodka coke. Game over!