There are multiple options for visiting the Amazon in Peru, and I chose to go via the city of Iquitos, mostly because Iquitos itself sounded so interesting to me. It's the largest city in the world that is not connected to the outside world by roads; you have to boat or fly in. I chose the latter. Once you're there, these little motor-taxis dominate the city. There are thousands and thousands of them, and sometimes they're coming by in such a steady stream that it's hard to get across the street. And the noise is constant and deafening. It's such a scene!
I only had one night in town before I headed down to the docks--and through this local market that had quite a lot of very interesting offerings, like these roasted worms on a stick...which were made unbelievably gross by the water bucket full of live, wriggling worms beneath the table of roasted ones for sale...
...and got on a boat that took me two hours down the Amazon. THE AMAZON!!!!
I only stayed in the jungle for about four days, but I'm struggling to condense the experience into two manageable posts. So for this one, we'll focus on the human side of the Amazon, and in the next one, the forest itself, animals, etc. It was just so intense! The heat, for starters. The humidity was unbelievable, and then when a storm finally broke it felt like a trap door in the sky had opened and might never be able to close again and surely we were all going to get washed away momentarily. And the mosquitoes! I must have 100 bites on me, despite wearing long sleeves and long pants and lots of bug repellent, constantly.
In just the few days I was there, I saw two of these huge barges full of hardwoods plying up the river toward Iquitos. It breaks my heart, the forest destruction and loss of biodiversity that is represented in this photo. Don't ever buy mahogany, friends! Things are dire.
While passing the winter at the bottom of the planet last year, a bunch of us Polies would get together to watch documentaries once/week, and we watched the entire BBC Human Planet series, which was mindblowing, and none of it more so than the segments covering the Amazon. Which is when I learned that in many places along the Amazon, people have their houses way up on stilts, because during the rainy season (December-May) the river rises so significantly that all these villages that were on land while I was here become villages sitting on the water, and people have to canoe around town, and the anacondas have a field day stealing people's dogs and chickens and other small animals and livestock. And I got to actually see for myself everyone's houses, ready for the water.
Though the rainy season has barely begun here this year, we did still spend a ton of time in a boat, going up and down the Amazon to various spots near the forest camp where I stayed, led by our fearless jungle native, Edwin.
I felt really uncomfortable when we paid visits to a couple of little informal zoo-type places (which you'll see more of in the next post), since those animals were being kept in captivity solely because tourists wanted to come see them. I felt a little better when, walking through a village, we came upon these little girls hanging out with their pet armadillo and sloth. Though I think they knew we were coming, and I am really curious if it is actually completely commonplace for people to have these animals as pets in this part of the world.
This is the bungalow that I got to stay in for three nights. Even the resident dog--who insisted on sleeping on my porch and keeping me awake all night scratching his fleas and thumping his tail against the door like he was knocking to come in--made it into the picture.
Okay, enough for now. Second Amazon post to follow....
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