by Jessica O’Hair
photos Courtesy Embratur

The speedboat leaves the docks of Belém at nine in the morning, and within minutes the city’s skyline dissolves into deep green. Ahead lies Combu Island, where the Guamá River narrows into igarapés — quiet, glassy channels that thread through the rainforest. There is no engine noise loud enough to interrupt the sensation of arriving somewhere unhurried. This is the gateway to one of the Amazon’s most compelling experiences: a day spent tracing cacao from tree to bar, guided by a woman the island calls, simply, its daughter.

Belém: The Amazon’s Capital of Flavor
Belém has spent the last several years building a reputation that finally matches its geography. Recognized by UNESCO as a Creative City of Gastronomy, the capital of Pará sits at the mouth of the Amazon River, surrounded by 42 islands that make up roughly two-thirds of its territory. Its cuisine — a layered blend of Indigenous, African, and European influences — is inseparable from the forest itself: açaí, cupuaçu, tucupi, and jambu are not novelties here but the daily vocabulary of the table. The Mercado Ver-o-Peso, one of Latin America’s largest open-air markets, distills that identity into a single sensory experience: stalls of medicinal herbs, Marajoara handicrafts, and river-grown produce standing as a living archive of how food and culture intertwine in Pará. Belém’s global profile only grew when the city hosted the United Nations’ COP30 climate conference, placing its sustainability story — and its islands — in front of an international audience.

Doña Nena: The Daughter of Combu
No single figure captures Belém’s relationship between gastronomy and forest stewardship better than Izete Costa — known across the region as Doña Nena. What began decades ago as a modest effort to turn traditional cacao knowledge into income has grown into Filha do Combu, a small chocolate factory and tourism program that now employs twenty people, sixteen of them women. On her agroforestry property, cacao trees grow beside Brazil nut and samaúma trees rather than in cleared plantation rows; rows of banana trees are planted specifically to attract the bees that pollinate the cacao. It is farming designed to work with the standing forest, not against it.

Visitors who make the crossing to her property are walked through the full arc of chocolate-making — the harvest, the fermentation, the drying of the beans, and finally the transformation into handmade bars — narrated by Doña Nena herself, with the kind of generosity that turns a demonstration into a conversation. Her project has drawn recognition well beyond Combu: during COP30, Annalena Baerbock, then president of the UN General Assembly, made the same boat crossing to taste her chocolate and walk the same forest trail. It is a rare thing to find a half-day excursion that doubles as a genuine case study in community-led climate resilience — and rarer still to find one this delicious.

A Day Among the Islands
The itinerary continues beyond the chocolate factory. At Saldosa Maloca, hostess Prazeres Quaresma welcomes visitors into a tradition of açaí production passed down through generations — including a demonstration by the peconheiros, the expert climbers who scale the palms to harvest the fruit. The açaí that follows, served the way Pará prefers it — with grilled fish, tapioca flour, or folded into ice cream — bears little resemblance to the sweetened version familiar abroad. A riverside ribeirinho lunch rounds out the afternoon: grilled fish alongside jambu, the native leaf known for its mild tingling sensation, and tacacá, a broth built from tucupi and dried shrimp. Regional fruits — cupuaçu, bacuri, taperebá — close the meal on a bright, unfamiliar note.

Street River: Art on the Water
The day’s final stop is Street River, the Amazon’s first floating art gallery. Created by artist Sebá Tapajós, the project has transformed more than ten stilt houses into a gallery of murals painted by artists from across Brazil and beyond, rendered in ink formulated to protect the wood and preserve the images against the river’s humidity. Gliding slowly between the houses as the murals emerge from the waterline is less a sightseeing stop than a quiet meditation on what it means to live on — and with — the river.

Planning the Journey
Belém is reached most directly through its Val-de-Cans International Airport, which receives national and international flights. Travelers should pack light clothing, sunscreen, insect repellent, and a hat — the Amazon has its own requirements regardless of the season. For those seeking a responsible way to experience it, Kayré Experiências, a Belém-based operator, has built its reputation on exactly this kind of itinerary — recognized by Brazil’s national tourism promotion agency, Embratur, specifically for its chocolate route through the islands, developed in partnership with Sebrae/PA. It is proof that Belém’s most rewarding experiences are also its most conscientious ones.

✦ BAJATRAVELER® TAKEAWAY
This is not a chocolate tour dressed up as culture — it is culture that happens to involve chocolate. Doña Nena’s Combu Island operation offers travelers something increasingly rare: direct, unscripted contact with the person and the forest behind the product, framed by a UNESCO-recognized culinary capital and a day of genuinely unfamiliar flavors. For travelers who want the Amazon to mean something beyond scenery, this itinerary delivers it.

Plan Your Visit
The Combu Island chocolate itinerary departs by boat from central Belém, typically around 9:00 a.m., and runs a full day including the visit to Doña Nena’s chocolate factory, Saldosa Maloca, a ribeirinho lunch, and Street River. Book through Kayré Experiências for a locally rooted, sustainability-focused experience.
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