Iquitos

Iquitos, Peru is a very large city on the Amazon River with entrance primarily by river-boat. There are no roads from the outside world and planes are prohibitively expensive. It was a very pleasant (and cheap) place to stay. A world apart from Colombia and Brazil.

Because gasoline is expensive, transport is by tuktuk (from the sound they make.) Annoyingly noisy motorized tricycles.



Iquitos is very clean and beautiful...


... except for the slog that is the area surrounding the ¨docks¨. Fascinating how the people there deal with it. Living conditions are absolute squallor despite the efforts the goverment makes to improve the situation. There is a large hospital just outside the area and they were doing their best to clean up the muddy roads the days I was there. It was incredible contrast to see a group of young students in their clean white and blue school uniforms walking through so much filth!


As for the docks, the boats just crash into the muddy shore where ever and throw out a gangplank. Because the river is at its lowest this time of year, it was especially muddy. (The river was much lower this year than it has been in years. Perhaps due to the amount of jungle being cleared for soybean crop to be fed to cattle.)


The Peruvian river-boats are nothing more than large platform barges with a diesel Catepillar prop engines attached to the back.

The plan was to take a river-boat on to Ecuador but upon seeing the condition of the docks and boats I had my doubts.

But for adventure!

First I had to find my boat which made for an interesting stroll up the shore - dodging in and out, up and over, between logging and boat-building operations.

There certainly weren´t any tourists around. Only a couple of days here as the boats leave weekly and I didn´t want to miss this one. Turns out I got lucky with a new ship on only it´s second journey.

So I hauled my gear down and saw another tourist getting on! We were both... disappointed?

I hung my hammock and waited for leaving time at 7:00pm.

I needed a bowl and spoon for collecting my meals from the kitchen on the lower deck. There were a bunch of roaming sales-kids so I asked one if he could go buy me a spoon and bowl while I layed in my hammock and protected my stuff. He left his basket and was back in less than 5 minutes!

It was to get much more crowded before we finally left at 10:00 pm.