Belem, Brazil

Yesterday we travelled to the amazing, beautiful city of Bele on the east coast of Brazil. The interesting authentic architecture placed among the giant city is very different and interesting, (The population is about 2.5 million people.) and surrounding rain forest is truly breathtaking. There are many amazing tourist sites that attract people of all ages. On our tour, we visited the market place, the "zoo", the bird aviary, the butterfly habitat, and the very old church. The unique market place is one of the biggest in the world, and you can find almost anything there. I would guess at least 100 different kinds of fruits are there, and many kinds of natural soaps, medicines, and perfumes from the rain forest. It smells wonderful, all these different fruits, nuts, grasses, leaves, vegetables and other substances, packed in one place. Some fruits were tart, like the cherry-like fruit that has 20 times the vitamin C of an orange. The sweet mango I tasted was only one of the 25 species of mango in the Amazon rain forest. The zoo we visited was very interesting.lack It was set up like a rain forest, and it had all kinds of exotic trees and plants right over the walkway. Rain forest animals such as crocodiles, a sloth, turtles, jaguars, monkeys, and more were spread out all over the zoo. It really gave me an idea of what the rain forest looked, smelled and felt like in real life.The bird aviary was phenominal. It had rain forest birds of all different colors, shapes, and sizes. There was one bird that depending on the amount of crab they ate, the more red the beautiful birds were. Some of these birds were a deep shade of blood red, but some were almost white. A kind of duck had a black and white polka dotted head. At the butterfly habitat, there were many kinds of colorful butterflies, flitting around and occationally landing on you. The last place we went to in Bele was the old church built a very long time ago. (See picture.) As you can see, Bele is a very interesting city with many things to see and do.