Best of Iquitos

The massive river system around Iquitos offers some of the best access to Indian villages, lodges and primary rainforest in the entire Amazon. If you want to go it alone, colectivo boats run more or less daily up and down the Rio Amazonas, and although you won’t get deep into the forest without a guide or the facilities offered by the lodge and tour companies, you can visit some of the larger riverine settlements.

A long day’s ride (130km) upstream from Iquitos lies Nauta , at the mouth of the Rio Maranon; from here, Bagazan is another couple of hours (40km) further up the Rio Amazonas, after which it’s slightly longer again (50km) to Requena , at the mouth of the Rio Tapiche. A recently finished road from Iquitos to Nauta has considerably shortened the journey and opened up tourism on the Rio Tigre and even into the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, though this is accessed mainly from Lagunas. The upper Rio Tigre is also excellent for its access to wildlife, but it’s at least three days away by boat. There are excellent organized tours to be had from LAGUNAS , three days upstream (USD 10-25 depending on whether you take hammock space or a shared cabin).

The first day takes you to the “start” of the Rio Amazonas, where the Ucayali and the Maranon rivers merge; the second day carries you along the Maranon towards Lagunas, where you arrive on the third day. It’s also some twelve hours downstream from Yurimaguas and accessible from there by boat colectivo (USD 5). There are a couple of hostals in Lagunas: the Hostal Montalban (USD 5-10), on the Plaza de Armas, is basic and small but suffices, as does the slightly cheaper Hostal La Sombra (up to USD 5) at Jiron Vasquez 1121.

Lagunas is the main starting-point for trips into the huge Pacaya Samiria National Reserve , comprising around 2,080,000 hectares of virgin rainforest leading up to the confluence between the Maranon and the Huallaga rivers, two of the largest Amazon headwaters. The reserve is a swampland during the rainy season (Dec-March), when the streams and rivers all rise, arguably comparable to the Pantanal Swamps of southwestern Brazil in the density of astonishingly visible wildlife.

It’s possible to arrange the guides here (about USD 10 a day per person, less if you’re in a group) and to spend as long as you like in the national reserve. You should of course be well prepared with mosquito nets, hammocks, insect repellent and all the necessary food and medicines. Officially you should obtain permission from the national parks authority, INRENA to get into the Reserve, but not everyone does.

The most memorable part of town, Puerto Belen looms out of the main town at a point where the Amazon, until recently, joined the Rio Itaya inlet. Consisting almost entirely of wooden huts raised on stilts, and until a few years ago also floating on rafts, it has earned fame among travellers as the Venice of the Peruvian Jungle. Actually more Far Eastern than Italian in appearance, it has changed little over its hundred years or so of life, remaining a poor shanty settlement and continuing to trade in basics like bananas, manioc, fish, turtle and crocodile meat. Whilst filming Fitzcarraldo here, Herzog merely had to make sure that no motorized canoes appeared on screen: virtually everything else, including the style of the barriada dwellings, looks like an authentic slum town of the last century.

The only real change is that the Rio Amazonas rarely comes in this far anymore, even in high water; what was once the riverbed is now a mass of river grasses and newly cultivated plots, interspersed with wooden buildings, many of them still on wooden stilts, though they rarely seem to need them any more. These days, even in high water season, boats have to divert just under half a kilometre out into the Rio Amazonas before turning back into Belen itself.