First Day in Iquitos

We arrived at the hotel in Iquitos early Sunday morning. Iquitos is a pretty busy city about 400,000 population that is known as the largest city that you can't get to be road. Located in the Amazon basin it is cut off from the rest of Peru by the Andes Mountains. It was a big rubber boom town in the late 1800s but not much has happened since.



The primary means of transportation in and around the city is motorcycle and moto-taxi, which is a rickshaw pulled by a motorcycle.


Rather than go to sleep after flying all night, we decided to go down to the market in Belen. We met up with another small group of tourists that had a guide to show us around the market.


His name was Angel and he is training to be a tour guide. He took good care of us.




The Belen market is huge; it is mostly outdoors and booths wind up and down the streets for miles. Sunday is market day so it was fairly crowded.

They sell the typical fruits and vegetables alongside just about everything else you could want (or not want).




Lots of chicken.




...and more magical potions and natural remedies than you could imagine.






Not really sure what kind of meat this is...




... But that's definitely monkey meat.




We also took a boat ride on the River Itayo which runs through the Iquitos area and connects to the Amazon. There was a baptism ceremony down by the riverbank.








We took a walk through one of the poorest parts of town - waterfront property. Waterfront is not considered prime property here and only the poorest people get stuck living there. Mostly due to how inconvenient it is when the river rises 40 feet during the rainy season. They either build their houses on stilts.




Or build houses that can float up and down with the changing water level.




Tomorrow we get up early to visit our first village in need of clean water.

Location:Iquitos, Peru