Iquitos & the Amazon Jungle

25 - 30 April


I had an early flight out of Lima to Iquitos, a city of about 600,000 people in Peru's northwest, and Peru's gateway to the Amazon. Iquitos is the largest city in the world that is not accessible from the outside by road. While there are roads in and around the city, you can only get in by boat or plane.

The Amazonian Jungle is, quite simply, HUGE.

The flight stopped off in a town called Pucallpa, and as we descended into this little town the expanse of the Amazonian Jungle started to become evident. Everywhere, in all directions, was a flat expanse of trees. The amazing thing is, we then flew for another 1.5 hours or so to Iquitos (which is still a LONG way from where the Amazon enters the Atlantic) - seeing just more flat expanses of trees.

The Amazon rainforest, seemingly going on for ever

There were three rather notable things about Iquitos. The first is the humidity - while I was somewhat expecting it, I've never experienced such a hot and humid climate before, and I was continuously sweating all times of the day and night.

The second is the mototaxis - due to Iquitos' isolation by road, all vehicles are shipped in by boat, making them expensive, and motorbikes (and mototaxis) are much more cost-effective.

Mototaxis in Iquitos - it's often unusual to see a normal car

The third is the floating suburb of Belen. Being adjacent to the river, Iquitos is subject to rising and falling water levels. The residents of this relatively poor neighbourhood therefore built their houses to float with the seasonal water level changes.

The floating suburb of Belen, which might look a lot prettier if it wasn't for all the rubbish floating in the river. The wooden boards are used to walk from the shore to the houses.

My main reason for being in Iquitos was that it is an excellent place to head to a jungle lodge to get a real taste of the Amazon and it's wildlife. There's lots within about 150 km of Iquitos, but the owner of my hostel - Katoo - had a small, simple lodge on his own private land some 400 km away (generally, the further from the city the more wildlife you see). However he has also spent the last few years rehabilitating this land.

As much as you hear about the devastation of the Amazonian rainforest, I didn't really know much about it until I was there. In Peru especially, there are still major problems with deforestation - many communities survive only because of the money they make from selling wood, not helped in the least by a somewhat corrupted government. The law stipulates that any one person or organisation may only take 80 trees per year - so the large logging companies just buy 80 trees off every local they can find, and the government hasn't bothered to do anything about it. The presence of large oil companies looking for oil is also a major issue.

In Katoo's "Reserva Tapiche Ohara", he has now forbidden any logging, or any hunting of bush meat (the locals like to hunt tortoises, birds or anything else they can eat). While this in itself is a start to helping the wildlife and their environment, it also means the reserve is now full or wildlife that have nothing to scare them away. The income he generates from bringing tourists into his land he hopes to use to increase his land and save a wee bit more of the forest. So, myself, Rogier (Holland) and Chris (Canada) set off to see it.

Being so far away, it was a 1.5-hour drive followed by a 6-7 hour boat ride to get to his lodge, mostly racing through Amazonian jungle with trees on all sides and several small villages of thatched huts on the riverbanks. We had a couple of stops for lunch (in a small town) and a coconut (at a little community where all the men walked around with machetes and we sat in a little thatched hut with a little pet bird and drank our coconut juice then ate it from the inside!).

Floating houses just off the town of Requena

Downing some very refreshing coconut juice at the village of Galicia

Being so long travelling, we arrived late in the evening to the simple lodge, with a generator for an hour of electricity each night and sleeping in hammocks. While simple it was perfectly comfortable for a couple of days.

Tapiche Ohara Lodge

We left almost at dawn the next morning in a pair of dug-out canoes. Being the end of the high-water season, much of the forest was still flooded, making a canoe the best way to go searching for wildlife due to it being virtually silent, compared to bush-bashing. We saw several toucans, kingfishers, a sloth way up in a tree, the head of a caiman swimming away, had breakfast with some lovely blue butterflies, and spotted a squirrel and finally a capuchin monkey and a few spider monkeys - but our guides told us this was a pretty "disappointing" collection! On the way back I had a little frog riding on my shoulder for a few minutes too.

Canoeing through the flooded jungle

After lunch, we headed into a small lagoon and went for a bush walk. Our guides told us about the rubber trees (a huge industrial boom in Iquitos around 1880-1910), spotted a tree iguana and a very well-preserved recent jaguar footprint. Then, as we were coming back, our guide Hector, just behind me, suddenly spotted a snake.

It seemed that the other 4 of us had just walked within a metre of an Amazonian Bushmaster, one of the most dangerous snakes in the rainforest. It had slithered away a few metres just after I walked past, which made Hector see it. It was some 3 metres long, a sort of light brown with dark brown stripes - and Katoo cheerfully told us that if it bit any of us they'd be performing an impromptu amputation as we wouldn't have enough time to get to the hospital. Eventually we retreated back a bit and the snake shuffled away, but for 3 or 4 minutes, there were 3 very nervous tourists!

The Bushmaster!

Jaguar footprint

As it grew dark, we heard some howler monkeys nearby. These are the loudest animals in the world, and just 2 or 3 of them can make a noise that sounds somewhat like a row of motorbikes revving up at the startline of a race. They can be heard a long way in every direction. We managed to creep up on them and spot them up in the trees, although they heard our clumsy bush-crashing and went dead silent and still until we retreated. We stumbled back through the gathering darkness to our boat and back to the lodge.

Howler monkeys roaring nearby

The next day we were again up bright and early, and motored off to a nearby creek. As soon as we turned off the motor, we saw some spider monkeys, a very small variety that was playing around at the edge of the creek and watching us. It was the start of an incredible morning of seeing wildlife - in total, we saw 8 varieties of monkey (spider, squirrel, howler, and a number of different capuchins, one crossing the creek near us and some spider monkeys playing in a tree above us), an awesome anteater, a South American racoon, a huge number of great egrets and other birds, including babies, at a nesting area, swam in a lagoon (where piranhas were also, apparently!), saw an impressive large falcon, and heard the rather frightening grunts of another caiman very nearby.

Spot the toucan (difficulty level: 2)!

Spot the brown capuchin monkey (difficulty level: 3)!

The same brown capuchin monkey clambering around the trees to cross the creek

Spot the anteater (difficulty level: 4)!

Going for a swim to relieve the sweat!

The bird nesting area

Baby birds in their nest

We'd put out a net and caught a few fish for dinner (one of which had it's eyes eaten out by a piranha while still alive - ick!), and headed back for lunch. In the afternoon we wandered around a bit in the canoe, theoretically fishing but without much success. Instead, we were visited by some of the famous river dolphins, known locally as bufeos. They have a slightly different build to a sea dolphin, and come in two varieties - the smaller, more common grey dolphin, and the larger, rarer pink dolphin (yes, they do exist, as bizarre as it sounds!). The Amazon water is very dark, but we were lucky enough to have a group around us play around a bit and come up to the surface for some air. Unfortunately they were almost impossible to get a photo of!

We also got a bit of a fright when paddling into a little backwater to try another spot for fishing - a tree viper, maybe "only" 2.5 metres long this time, sitting in the tree we were passing under. Hector cheerfully told us this one would also be doing a fair bit of damage if he attacked too, and when the viper climbed a bit higher, continued to paddle the boat under the tree! After a minute of protesting, we retreated to the main river.

Then, the jungle downpour hit! We waited it out for 30 minutes at Hector's house before returning to the lodge for another excellent dinner and an early night. We were up at 5.30am for the return trip to Iquitos and were rewarded with a stunning dawn over the trees as we headed back along the river.

Dawn on the Tapiche River as we headed back to Iquitos

We had the afternoon off to catch up on emails and grab a beer with Katoo, Rogier & Chris, and I sorted everything out for the next journey - the speedboat to the Colombia/Brazil/Peru border, a full day trip leaving at 6am. It was my last day in Peru, after 89 days my visa was due to expire and I was ready for some new adventures in Colombia. Bring it on!