Alter do Chão is the Amazon's great surprise: a village on the Rio Tapajós with white sand beaches, clear water and the feel of a Caribbean coast, a thousand kilometres from the sea. It lies thirty-five kilometres from Santarém, whose airport is the way in.
The beaches are seasonal. From roughly August to December the river drops and uncovers sandbars, the best known the Ilha do Amor, a spit just across a narrow channel from the village square that you can wade or be paddled to. In the rainy months the water rises by several metres, the beaches go under and the forest along the banks floods into igapó, which you visit by canoe instead.
The village is small, a few streets of pousadas, açaí stands and bars around the square, and busiest in September during the Festa do Çairé, one of the oldest festivals in Amazonia. From here boats go up the Tapajós to the Floresta Nacional do Tapajós, where river communities take visitors into primary forest with trees fifty metres tall, and across to the Canal do Jari and the Lago Verde.
Come in the dry season for the beaches and in the wet for the flooded forest — it is a different place each time.