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Probably the final part of our stay in the Columbian Amazon is all to do with the mad rush out of there. There is one fast boat 6 days a week which goes from Santa Clara in Peru to Iquitos in Peru, some 10 to 15 hours away, depending on the boat and on the state of the Amazon. To get to the boat is a convoluted logistical border crossing exercise. The boat leaves at 5 in the monring. Steve's place is about 30 mins drive from Leticia town. So it was up at half 3, loaded into a car and dropped off at Tabartinga in Brasil (border crossing number 1 achieved). From there it is a taxi boat across the river to Santa Clara in Peru. Then Gordon shows off his prowess in speaking Spanich by putting 8 months of language immersion to good use by banging on the door to the hosue of the passport control guy (remember we may be in our third country but it still on 5am) and demanding that he get himself out of be and get down to the river to stamp our passports........a dischevalled Peruvian Border Control guy comes to the door and
asks "esta Barqua?".........yes mate, there is a boat every day of the week!
So, passport's stamped, bags loaded, seats claimed and 12 hours on a boat, we finally made it! Our last long journey and where do we end up? Iquitos. The largest city in the world not accessible by a road. The only way in or out is by plane or boat. Iquitos a quintesential bush town. It was established during the rubber boom and has a chequered history of exploitation of the indigenous population by the rubber barons. What remains today though is a quirky town, with an amazing market, sensational views overlookig the Amazon River and even an Iron House designed by one Mr Eiffel (yep you guessed it).
We glady got off the boat and through a rugby scrum of taxi drivers found one who would take us to Mad Mick's Bunk House. Steve from Leticia had suggested that we look up Mad Mick, an expat Englishman, if he didn't have accomodation would point us in the right direction....point he did and we ended up at a lovely little place just off the main square and around the corner from the Promenade which
Noctornal Monkey
This poor creature was petrified - this was no Santa Marta and a stpe short of a zoo overlooked the Amazon. After a shower to feel human again (well we had been travelling since about 3 that morning) Ann and I headed to a bar (again recommended by our mate Mick) and savoured the local beer....Iquitena....ahhhhh!
We had a couple of days to kill in Iquitos. We had to be in Lima for our flight on the 13th and from what had heard of other travellers on the way through South America, Lima was just not a nice place. Besides, Iquitos was kind of cool. It had a real place of opportunity feel and you could imagine what it would have been like in the rubber days with people coming to make and lose their fortunes.....brave, brave souls! Anyway we had heard about this wonderful Butterfly and Animal Santuary a short boat ride from Iquitos so we headed to the local port and got a boat taxi to a small village just outside of Iquitos. We had a ball, cuddling monkeys, sloths and anteaters, patting a tapir......the animals through our trip have been a major highlight. yes its sad that they end up in places like rescue centres and as we were to find out that day,
not all rescue centres have the animal's interests at heart.
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