Marajó is the largest island surrounded by fresh and tidal water in the world, a flat, marshy block of land about the size of Switzerland sitting in the mouth of the Amazon. It is three to four hours by ferry from Belém, and most visitors stay on its eastern side, in Soure and Salvaterra.
The island runs on water buffalo. They were brought here in the late nineteenth century, and there are now more of them than people: buffalo pull carts, carry police patrols in Soure, and turn up on menus as buffalo steak and in the soft, mild buffalo-milk cheese sold everywhere. Several fazendas take guests out on horseback across flooded grassland full of scarlet ibis, egrets and the occasional caiman.
The beaches on the east coast are long, empty and shaped by the tide — Praia do Pesqueiro near Soure is the classic — and the water is brown and fresh or brackish depending on the season, because this is still the river, not the sea.
Marajó also gave its name to a pre-Columbian culture whose elaborate painted ceramics, made more than a thousand years ago, are the finest in Amazonia. Local potters still make pieces in the Marajoara style, and it is one of the few souvenirs from the region worth carrying home.