Iquitos and the Amazon Jungle

---

Iquitos, the Peruvian jungle capital, is a strange old place. The city is an island in the middle of the jungle; only reachable by boat or plane (in fact it’s the largest city in the world not connected to a national road network). As there is but one road heading out of the city (and that only goes 100km to Nauta), not many people have cars, so Iquitos is Mototaxi City, with an alleged 20,000 of these mototaxis serving the 400,000 residents. I spent 8 days in the area in total, and the heat during the day was decidedly too much. One day we had exceptional heat, which apparently reached nearly 40 degrees. When the storms come, it absolutely buckets it down, but this makes a refreshing change, as long as you’re indoors. Interestingly, as we’re so close to the equator, the difference in the amount of daylight between the summer and winter solstices is only 18 minutes, so no daylight saving time needed here! The city centre doesn’t look much like a jungle city, with pretty standard stone buildings everywhere, including some very ornate architecture built during the rubber boom at the end of the 19th century. On the corner of the main square, one of the rubber barons even went to the trouble of purchasing a building known as “The Iron House”, which was built in Paris by Gustave Eiffel, and having it shipped over and rebuilt here. The city is surrounded by rivers, with the main port on the Amazon, and other smaller docks on the smaller tributaries. One neighbourhood of the city, called Belen, is known as “Little Venice”, as the buildings are built over the water and transportation by boat is the main way to get around. Some of the houses are in fact floating freely. However, I very much doubt whether Venice could be this dirty or smelly, with the rivers filled with litter and dirt, yet people walk through this water as if it were clean. It was slightly worrying to see so many children jumping into the river and swimming, knowing that these floating houses have no drainage systems and people just throw their rubbish into the river. I personally didn’t like the area at all and couldn’t wait to get out. Passing through the chaotic market, one difference to other markets I noticed was the turtle meat, with the legs and head still attached. The food in Iquitos, with the exception of the jungle fruit ice-creams, was a bit of a let down, as the restaurants I went too just weren’t very good. I think to eat well here you have to pay a lot more than in other cities in Peru, but as my hostel had a kitchen, I made full use of that instead of eating out all the time.

I wasn’t initially planning on heading deep into the jungle, as I had originally planned to do this in Bolivia, but seeing as how the prices were a lot more reasonable than expected, I changed my mind. I booked a 3 day tour into primary jungle some 215 km from Iquitos on the Yarapa river, which is a tributary of the Ucayalí river near the source of the Amazon. The journey to the lodge took around 5 hours, in a combination of car, launch and motorised canoe (with very uncomfortable seats!). For most of this journey it was absolutely pouring with rain, but luckily I was undercover for most of this. The lodge in the jungle was surprisingly comfortable, with my own ensuite hut all to myself. The main annoyance here was the sheer quantity of mosquitoes; I had a mosquito net on my bed, but whilst walking around during the day and eating in the evenings I got bitten all the time. Even though we were quite far in the jungle, there were still villages nearby (not indigenous villages), with the people living in rather basic conditions. In the afternoon of the first day, 2 guides from the lodge took me out on a motorised canoe along the nearby rivers. I was the only person on this tour, despite the agency telling me 2 other people had already booked, so it wasn’t much fun socially as the guides pretty much talked amongst themselves. The lodge itself was sat next to a lagoon called Yarina (hence so many mosquitoes), and this lagoon was full of this type of floating grass which made crossing it to the main river really difficult. It’s actually high water season at the moment, meaning a large percentage of the rainforest is actually covered by the rising rivers, which unfortunately means a lot of the wildlife goes even deeper in the jungle where there is drier ground. (No-one mentioned this to me before I got there). Sitting in that canoe for 5 continuous hours was not the most comfortable experience, but it was worth it to see the monkeys, sloth, birds and insects. The wildlife is easier to see from the river as most is high up in the tree tops, which you can’t see that well from the ground. Returning after sunset, the noise from all the frogs was nearly deafening. With no artificial light, coupled with a clear sky, it was amazing to see how bright some of the stars are, as well as the many fireflies. The second day was fortunately dry, so one of the guides took me on a walk through the jungle showing me the different trees and plants etc. though we didn’t see that much wildlife. Quite a few monkeys (there are 9 species in this part of the jungle), but they always move off as soon as they hear you approaching. The plants were interesting, but the jungle didn’t seem to me to be that different from normal forests. There were some trees with vines so I had to do a quick Tarzan impression and swing from one tree across to another (unfortunately the photos came out blurry). Back in the boat, we went in search of some giant lily pads, and then some pink river dolphins, though the ones we found were young ones so weren’t actually that pink yet. The food at the lodge was surprisingly some of the best vegetarian food I’ve had in Peru, and included some local jungle vegetables which were for the most part very palatable. A short walk after sunset led us to find quite a few tarantulas, as well as a caiman the guide caught plus a toad or two. Upon returning to my room, there was a small salamander in the bathroom which disappeared quickly enough. The third day was a complete wash out. After another walk through a different part of the jungle, the skies opened up and we couldn’t do much more, which was a bit of a shame, but luckily we had seen pretty much everything there was to see in that specific area. After lunch it was a long 5 hour journey back to Iquitos that seemed to last forever.

I had booked a flight back to Lima as the boat and bus option works out much more costly and takes a week or so, but this left me with a few days to explore the area around Iquitos, where there are quite a few interesting things to see. There was a “tourist complex” just outside the city, comprising a zoo and a lake, which actually turned out to be a very fun morning. They had lots of South American animals that I hadn’t managed to spot in the jungle, and the conditions of the cages etc. seemed much better than previous zoos I’ve seen in Latin America. One of the strangest animals there was the paiche fish, which is endangered in the wild, and with a length of up to 10ft, is the largest freshwater fish in the world. I didn’t get a good picture unfortunately, but they were interesting to see. The usual monkeys, parrots, anacondas etc. were also there of course. Another site I went to was an animal orphanage and butterfly farm, 30 minutes away up the Amazon by boat. There were a few species of wild monkeys that are tame as they get fed, so they come up very close to play, which makes a stark contrast to the fully wild ones in the jungle. The centre had quite a few animals which had been handed in or rescued in bad condition - hunters kill the parents and sell the babies as pets to people who don’t know how to look after them. This was even the case for the jaguar they have there, though I can’t quite comprehend how anyone could buy a jaguar as a pet. Today, which is my last day in Iquitos, I went to a manatee refuge. A manatee, also known as a sea cow, is a rather strange looking creature that has nearly been hunted to extinction in the wild. It looks a bit like a seal, but is much bigger and is actually part of the elephant family. At this centre they have pups who have been orphaned, which they look after before releasing them back into the wild, and we were able to bottle-feed some of them. It’s strange that the largest animal in the Amazon is so little-known.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading off bright and early to the airport for my flight to Lima. Am hoping that the flight will be OK, but I’m never sure with these small South American airlines. From Lima I’ll be heading south down into Chile - 50 hours on 2 buses in fact to Santiago. Looking forward to getting that out of the way. From there I’ll be travelling with a friend across to Buenos Aires, so the next blog update may not be for a while.

---

Photos

Red-headed Iguana
Taken at a zoo, not in the jungle!