About a year ago, my parents came to visit and we went on a jungle adventure in the southern rainforest of Peru. We had a great time and I got to enjoy a few days of first class treatment (at least by my standards), including English speaking guides, , beautiful accommodations, good food and having everything booked by someone else.
This year, a bunch of us volunteers decided to go visit the northern rainforest as our last big blowout vacation. We were setting a much lower standard of quality, going as backpackers and having done some guide book research, but mostly just setting out and seeing where we got to. I’ll set out the basic itinerary and travel times and then hit the highlights. I left my capitol city, Huaraz, on a 9:30 pm bus which arrived in the northern coastal city of Trujillo at about 8 am the next day. That afternoon we left Trujillo on another bus at 3 and got to Tarapoto, the biggest city in the department of San Martin the next day at about 10 am (that’s right…it was a 20 hour bus ride). We spent a day exploring the city and after lunch the next day (days of the week quickly became meaningless) we took a 3 hour van ride to the town of Yurimaguas, the last town on our itinerary reachable by road. After a night in a riverside hostel, we got to the docks at 7:30 am to catch a ten hour boat ride to the town of Lagunas. In Lagunas we met up with a pre-booked guide who took us on a 3 day, 2 night canoe tour of the huge nature reserve called Pacaya-Samiria. When we returned, we showered, ate something and trudged down to the port at 1 am to catch a boat that took us 30 hours downstream to the town of Iquitos, the biggest city (in the world?) not accessible by road. We spent a few days there being tourists, and then it was a flight back to Lima and a bus to Huaraz (estimated return travel time—about 10 hours).
That’s the rundown of where we were and how we got there. It was a lot of travel, but since the biggest chunks of it were by boat, we were amongst friends and we were in novel surroundings, most of it was enjoyable. The boat rides were like nothing I have ever experienced. These boats take a long time and serve town that have no road access. So in addition to carrying human cargo, they also transport everything, and I mean everything, that you would need to supply a population. The first boat we were on was relatively small, but still held crates of fresh produce, sacks of rice and crates of live chickens. The human cargo meanwhile, had strung up hammocks in every available nook, and although quarters were a bit tight, it wasn’t a bad day to while away the day, with occasional naps thrown in.
The second, larger boat to Iquitos had a corral with about 20 cows on the front deck and more crates of tomatoes, carrots and other produce than I could even begin to count.
And when we finally arrived in Iquitos, we pulled up to port next to a huge barge that was being loaded full of nothing else but empty cases of beer getting ready to be sent upriver and refilled. By our best estimate there were well over 300,000 empties on that boat.
And that’s one of the things that made Iquitos really cool—everything you saw had gotten there by boat. But I am getting ahead of myself.
First was Tarapoto, where our group of 13 spent the afternoon taking a short hike to a waterfall. It was a beautiful stroll, about 15 minutes up a clean path through dense greenery to get to a waterfall with a pretty nice swimming hole at the base and a rock about 15 or 20 feet up to jump off.
We spent an hour or two splashing around and got back to the van just in time to avoid a massive jungle downpour.
The next two days were spent in transit to get to our canoe trip. We had a fleet of 4 canoes, hand made out of tree trunks and relaxing in those was a pretty good way to spend a dew days. We spent the days floating downriver looking for wildlife and cool plants and the two nights were spent in a huge riverside bungalow where we swam and fished and tried not to get bit by mosquitoes.
We saw sloths, monkeys, a small anaconda, piranhas, crocodiles, frogs, lizards and we just missed a river dolphin. And swimming was extra exciting because you knew all of those things were in the water and you just had to hope not to get eaten… (nobody got eaten).
The long boat ride to Iquitos was…long. But also a really pretty trip and between the scenery, the fact that we were floating down the Amazon, naps, my i-pod, a Stephen King book, friends and snacks, I mostly managed to stave off boredom. Iquitos was a cool city and it felt extra good to get to our final destination and stay in the same place for a few days straight. The city is a big sprawling place, with fleets of moto-taxis and motorcycles roaming the streets in addition to really cool wooden buses. There are also some residual signs of when Iquitos was a super rich rubber town, including a building built by the dude who designed the Eifel tower
and shipped there by boat and various buildings covered in painted tiles shipped from Portugal. We spent our days roaming the traditional and handicraft markets, checking out a zoo, going to a nearby town known for its mask making and generally just wandering the city. It is a bit of a hippy haven, so we were not the only non-Peruvians there and the gringo attractions include some nice coffee shops and a sports bar that Sports Illustrated once called the best in Peru. I even got to eat onion rings that were almost diner quality, something I have not found here at all in my two years…
A side note on the sports bar and sports here in general. We were eating a late lunch in the sports bar and there were some limeñens upstairs eating and cheering. Pete’s brother asked why. It turns out that Peru was playing an international tennis match. That’s the kind of national pride Peruvians have—probably nobody knew the dude who was playing name, but they were cheering at the telecast. Fast forward 5 hours. We are in a bodega, crammed in with about 50 people, a mix of hippy dreaded ex-pats and general Peruvians, watching Peru play Chile in a Copa America (like the world cup but for Mexico and south) qualifier on a 20 inch TV. And if you closed your eyes you would think they were watching it live in the stadium. Every almost goal was met with huge gasps and groans. A teenager brought in a bass drum to rile up the room. And Peru pulled it out 1-0 on a goal in extra time, which was met with raucous applause and hugging all around. It was pretty awesome.
Back on topic. The coolest thing in Iquitos was probably the market. It had all the things a normal Peruvian market has (vegetables, fruits, cooked food) but also a crazy “natural healing” section and a ridiculous fish section. The natural products aisle had stall after stall of herbs, salves and potions to cure whatever ailment you might have. The fish section, in addition to having such delicacies as turtle and crocodile meat, had butchered fish that were bigger then me and fish pulled out of the Amazon that looked so strange you had to look twice to make sure they were real.
It was pretty gross, but I had never seen anything like it.
And overall, the jungle was a really cool place to see and hang out. In a lot of ways it felt like a completely different country. The food is different, the people act differently, they speak Spanish with a different accent and I barely had to eat any potatoes all week. On the whole, the people we interacted with were super friendly, out going and welcoming. Because of the heat they spend a lot of time outdoors and as a result they seemed to be much more social and outgoing than the people of the Sierra. The food was delicious, including tons of fresh fish, bananas, popsicles and roasted grubs (which I declined to try). And although I am glad to be back in the mountains, where there are no mosquitoes and I can move without sweating, it was a really great trip and I can understand how there are gringos who go there for a week and wind up staying for months.
