From the Andes to the Amazon: a six-week riverboat adventure to Belém, Brazil’s gateway to the river

<p>Visiting the city hosting the Cop30 conference brings with it questions about farming, tourism and sustainability</p><p>In an open-air market in the Brazilian city of Belém, I had a problem. It was breakfast time and I wanted a drink, but the long menu of fruit juices was baffling. Apart from pineapple (<em>abacaxi</em>) and mango (<em>manga</em>), I’d never heard of any of the drinks. What are <em>bacuri</em>, <em>buriti</em> and <em>muruci</em>? And what about <em>mangaba</em><em>, </em><em>tucumã</em> and <em>uxi</em>? Even my phone was confused. <em>Uxi</em>, it informed me, is a Zulu word meaning “you are”.</p><p>But then I started to recognise names that I’d heard on my six-week voyage from the Andes to the mouth of the Amazon. There was <em>cucuaçu</em>. I’d picked one of those cacao-like pods in a Colombian village about 1,900 miles (3,000km) back upriver. And even further away, in Peru, there was <em>açai</em>: a purple berry growing high up on a wild palm. The Amazon, it seems, is vast and varied, but also remarkably similar along its astonishing length.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/nov/11/andes-to-the-amazon-riverboat-adventure-to-belem-brazil-cop30">Continue reading...</a>