Caminhos da Reportagem disembarks in Alter do Chão, a village bathed by the transparent waters of the Tapajós River. To reach the destination, with pristine beaches in the middle of the Amazon, it is necessary to travel 38 km along the road that connects Santarém to the village, in western Pará. The community today has just over 6,000 inhabitants. 
Tapajos River – Publicity TV Brazil
There the landscape changes throughout the year. In July, for example, when the reporting team visited the region, the waters of the Tapajós were still high and several beaches were submerged. As the professor at the Federal University of Western Pará explains, in the region there is a rainy season and a dry season. “So we have the period when the waters rise, then the waters go down, a drier period and then it starts to fill up again.”
When the beaches are still underwater, the tour through the Enchanted Forest attracts tourists and locals alike. Our team did the tour guided by its Itaguari. The so-called Enchanted Forest is formed by an igapó, an area flooded by the typical rains of the Amazon. We also went to Serra da Piraoca, or Serra do Cruzeiro, one of the highest points in Alter do Chão, accompanied by journalists Fábio Barbosa and Reginaldo Balieiro, creators of the Caminhos da Floresta project.
Giant Samaúma, Alter do Chão, Pará. – Publicity TV Brazil
The Tapajós National Forest, the Flona, is another tourist attraction in the region. Our team walked about 7 km to reach the giant samaúma, known as the mother of the Amazon, Vovózona. The tree is over 1,100 years old. Who accompanied the team on this tour was the guide Raimundo Vasconcelos, who lives in the community. In the Flona conservation unit live 1,050 families and around 4,000 residents.
Ronete Costa has an inn in Alter do Chão. She returned to her hometown of Santarém after 12 years living in Altamira. Ronete says she is suspicious to speak, but believes that the residents of Tapajós are a very cozy people. And she argues that the people from Pará themselves need to discover more about the beauties of the village, because sometimes they go a lot to the South and Northeast of the country and when she arrives in Alter she realizes that she has all this so close and doesn’t value it. “You see people from outside, foreigners as we say here, they defend the Amazon much more than we ourselves, who are here in the Amazon. So we need to know more to be able to defend”, she says.
Chef Saulo Jennings was considered the best chef in the northern region of the country and works with typical products from Pará. Our team visited Saulo’s restaurant, where he explained that he seeks to value not only Pará food, but also local history and culture. “Every time I open my window and look at the Tapajós, it gives me strength, recharges my batteries to continue my work, to continue taking the name of my entire region for Brazil to know”.
O Reporting Paths airs this Sunday at 10pm on TV Brazil.
