Red Shoe Musings

To Yurimaguas

After only one night in Tarapoto we went to Yurimaguas where the boat leaves for Iquitos. A very cool jungle road journey accompanied by some amazing music by a band I wish I'd noted the name off. Idiot. Winding jungle roads, heat, happiness.

Extracting the correct information from people in the jungle is challenging and rather frustrating. When we arrived a particularly annoying taxi driver noticed that we were foreign - not exactly a difficult observation to make. He tried to grab my backpack which instantly annoyed me. I can MANAGE! And it's my stuff! We wanted to time sort ourselves out and collect our thoughts, come up with an action plan. He was intrusive, forcing his business on us, it was uncomfortable and none of us liked it. We decide to not use him, in my opinion he looked a bit high, there was something not right about him. However, when we tried to use the other taxi driver parked outside, it became clear that there was a queuing system and we were obliged to use the weirdo. We had no choice.

Our suspicions were correct, he was a liar, he took us to the port and gave us false information about the boat, then tried to take us to somewhere outside the market where we could get 'cheap' hammocks - a friend of his clearly. I felt thoroughly frustrated with him, he was totally taking advantage of the fact we were foreign, foreign but not stupid and I speak Spanish and apart from that most people know when they are being taken for a fool. I got him to take us to the market to drop us off and stop trying to fleece us. Shamelessly he tried to get us to a hostel - for pretty much three times the price of what we ended up paying - saying that we wouldn't find anywhere cheaper that was decent and secure.

Seamlessly moving from the misfortune of that arsehole to the fortune of meeting a really nice and helpful guy in the market eating watermelon who took us to a riverside backpacker haven for just 15 soles a night. It was pure bliss, so relaxing watching the river run by, sitting in a hammock on the balcony watching birds and butterflies pass by and listening to the children play in the water. Perfect.