Red Shoe Musings: October 2012

The Sea Plane

How do you get out of Iquitos? No road access, remember? Boats take days and we felt like we had already done that experience. Our crazy hostel owner also told us that the boat from Iquitos to Leticia, our next destination, was even grottier and nasty than the boat we had caught from Yurimaguas - didn't take long to decide to veto the idea of the second 3/4 day long boat journey.

The sea plane, we were informed was cheap and the fastest and easiest way of getting to away from Iquitos and it sounded like a bargain for a pretty cool experience so we got ourselves up bright and early and get to the military base where the plane left from.

There was a catch on the price and an issue with where the plane was going on the day we traveled. We had to make the last leg of the journey by ourselves by boat. The baggage allowance was 10k per person so we all had to pay (and me the most of all given that my backpack is a monster) a ridiculous amount of extra soles in excess baggage. This made me very very very grumpy.

Fortunately this soon passed and I enjoyed the flight, taking off from water with in a plane driven by two peruvian airforce men was pretty cool after all.

Sad thing was when we got to wherever it was we got to next it took as quite a while (two days) to work out how to get to Santa Rosa and then Leticia. People in the jungle just can't tell the truth to white people with backpacks. Fact.

So these photos are very uninspired but you get the idea.

Iquitos Photos

Since I did make it out of the hostel for a couple of strolls braving the heat and the weirdos in the streets, I thought I'd put some of the photos I managed to take on my solo walks up.

As I've said before there is evidence of the past wealth of Iquitos during the rubber trade boom, some of the older buildings were clad with some really cool-looking tiles.

I managed to track down a pair of really bizarre floral sunglasses with a slight cats-eye vibe which didn't survive very long in my backpack. I was hoping to find some cheap but cool clothes but sadly there was nothing that was cheap that didn't look even cheaper than its price.

I got talking to a peruvian guy who was a traveling artisan type, long hair, torn scruffy jeans, he told me he was staying in a hostel for 2 or 4 soles a night which is unbelievably cheap. Cheaper than food and drink. I wouldn't even like to imagine how revolting the interior of his hostel was. He made me a bracelet, I thanked him and we parted ways, I think I vaguely promised to check him later in the main square where he'd be selling his craft, this was a promise I failed to keep.

Some ominous looking birds near Belen market

Strange satellite dishes and cool tiles

Art Nouveau tiles, in very cool colours

A cool looking old sign and boarded up but well maintained windows

Delerium Tremens! Must be more touristy than I realise here then

A strange mixed of Iquitan buildings lined up in one street

Possibly the most rickety bus I've seen so far, I'm astonished but this does actually trump Tanzanian buses

Crumbling Iquitos, like most of Iquitos

Ceviche! Was a bit too scared to eat raw fish whilst in Iquitos...

Yes, some very cool type.

Graff

Love the long slender windows of this building

Belen -The Floating (Flooded) Village

So the before mentioned tour guide we met in the market also took us on a little boat ride to take a look around the floating village of Belen. It was, like the rest of the places we visited in the Amazon, flooded and therefore slightly more floating than usual. Telephone poles and street lamps were poking out of the water. He would sometimes tell us normally there is a road or a bridge here. I'm not entirely sure how much higher than normal the water level was but it was quite amazing to see how everyone was so accustomed to getting around by boat. Chickens, cats and dogs were house bound and sometimes found balancing on the smallest plank to keep dry and out of the water. Children and adolescents played and bathed in the murky water. Directly after the grimy market and knowing full well that a village constructed entirely out of pretty much make-shift wooden houses surely did not boast of any form of plumbing, seeing people splashing around in the water struck fear deep into my heart.

The houses were simple, wooden, with palm roofs, the windows weren't glazed. We visited the tour guide's home, complete with two cute cats, an adorable little white puppy called mariposa, his wife and a collection of young children (some his own, others cousins who were visiting). It was a single roomed, single storied house with no furniture to speak of, nor a kitchen as far as I could see, or even a bathroom for that matter. With all the people living on the river, using it both as a toilet and a shower, all within a relatively confined space like this it took seeing it first hand to really realise how simple people in Amazonian Peru really live. They were amazingly friendly in Belen, particularly in comparison to the centre of Iquitos, and in my opinion, it really should have been the other way round. Taking a passing look at what life was like in the floating flooded village was one of the better and most authentic things we did during the whole trip. In general, being in the jungle was good for getting away from the desensitised gringo trail tours and treks. Of course there were tours on offer and a few other travellers knocking around but it was possible to see something real without small children asking for money or llama women in their full indigenous get-up posing for pictures demanding money too. As we glided by the open windows and floating street food stalls cooking strange jungle food in the narrow river boats to passersby and residents. Flooded churches, flooded schools, flooded shops and so on I felt happy because everything that we saw was genuinely interesting. I really appreciated the experience in terms of seeing how different the conditions in which some humans live. I was comfortable on the boat, I didn't feel like we were being stared at for intruding nor were we being hassled for money, both of which are rare occurrences when you are a gringo backpacker in South America.

The floating city was very impressive. The relaxed and dozy dogs and cats confined to their water born prisons. The rubbish floating along, the electrical wiring poles and street lights sticking out of the water. The sheer number of people and their pets who all lived in right on the water like that was quite a mind boggling experience. All I can say is get yourself to Belen, the Venice of the Amazon before it gets swallowed into the gringo trail and becomes as fake an packaged as Cusco.

A terrifying amount of rubbish, as we walked along the precarious make-shift wooden bridges to get to the boat. And believe me it smelt as disagreeable as it looks.

On the way back on this stretch of bridge I had to pass a women carrying a baby and armfuls of shopping. She made sure, that if either of us was going to fall in, it would be me. Imagine just how traumatic it would actually have been to fall into that floating rubbish pit.