Red Shoe Musings

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.