Blogs from Loreto, Peru, South America - page 5

Given its proximity to the Amazon rain forest Iquitos seemed the perfect place from which to explore some of it, so we joined a three day tour headed for a lodge about 100km away. A huge slowboat took us 90 minutes down the amazon, our first of what would be many trips on the world's largest river. We then changed to a speedboat for 10 minutes to Indiana, a tiny village on the banks of the river. A 15 minute mototaxi took us across to the Napo River, a huge tributary of the amazon originating in Ecuador. The last leg was half an hour in a speedboat to our lodge, hidden in the Sukusary tributary, completely engulfed in rainforest. The lodge itself was impressive. It was not quite luxury, but they provided good food and even ... read more

Accompaning pictures are near the bottom of this page On the 19th of January I celebrated a landmark. I have been travelling for six months, I have been outside of my home country for six months, and I have been living in places where my mother-tongue is not spoken for six months. These and more are all firsts for me, and I have been in Peru for the majority of them. On the flip side of things, this means that my six-month Peruvian visa is nearly spent. As exiting and re-entering with a new tourist visa is fairly tranquil, I really just had to choose a border and visit for a day or two. My priorities were to not take an airplane, to be in an interesting ecosystem, to have a non-stressful journey, and (hopefully) ... read more

Arrivee tard dans la nuit a Iquitos on file se trouver un hotel, des le lendemain on file au commisariat et a l office du tourisme pour deposer les affaires de l americaine ( bon histoire un peu folle: a Pucallpa avant le depart du bateau on fait la rencontre de Rebecca, on parle une soiree ensemble sans plus, le lendemain le bateau part et en fin de journee on se pose quand meme la question ou est la 5eme gringa de la lancha??? pas vu! on pense tous au pire!! on rassemble ses affaires il y a son passeport son argent sa camera tout quoi!!! dans l idee de deposer ca a Iquitos en indiquant sa disparition) au commisariat on a deja rencontre des incompetents mais la ca depasse tout entendement, on explique l histoire ... read more

Well...we finally hit a snag in our plans. Friday: Flight from Bogota to Leticia (both in Colombia). Leticia is in the very south-east corner of Colombia at the tri-border of Colombia/Brazil/Peru. We crossed into Tabatinga, Brazil (no formal border entry just quite yet) with the intention of heading down the Amazon river on Saturday for 3 days to reach a town called Manaus. Our first surprise: the office that issues Brazilian Visas (in Leticia) closes at 2pm. We didn't get into town until about 4pm so immediately we knew we could not make the Saturday boat because the office isn't open on weekends. These boats only leave on Saturday and Wednesday so this set us back immediately at least 4 days. Our second surprise: about 30mins later we find out the office in Leticia NO LONGER ... read more

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 ... read more