La Amazonia

Got back yesterday from the Amazon. We stayed 2 days in Iquitos, the biggest city in the world with no highways connecting it to anywhere and 2 days in la selva (the rainforest). We had a great time. It was incredibly hot and humid there, but definitely worth the trip.

The first day we walked around the very small downtown then went to the Belen market. Its a famous market, which was overflowing with people. I went in to try to do some research. I was mildly successful and was able to talk to several people about informal lending in the jungle. We ate dinner then enjoyed the air-conditioning of our hotel.

The second days we took a boat on the Amazon into the jungle. We went to the lodge we were staying at (no air-conditioning, but well-equipped with mosquito nets to keep the bugs out) and ate lunch. After lunch we trekked through the selva, mike ate a bug that tasted like coconut, we went to a serpententario where they had monkeys and snakes and sloths to play with, we went on the boat to look for pink river dolphins (we saw a few from afar), swam in the amazon, then headed back for dinner. After dinner, I wasn't feeling well, but the rest of our group went off to look for alligators at night. They tell us we didn't miss much, as they didn't find alligators but did encounter a surplus of mosquitos.

The next day we woke up early and went bird watching. We saw a lot of cool birds, and I loved how tranquilo the morning was. After breakfast we headed to a local village. They told us about their tribe, then we danced with them a little bit before trekking back to our lodge. We then ate lunch and headed back to Iquitos.

The fourth day we went on a city tour. We also went to a manatee conservation center. We got to feed a baby manatee some milk! Then we took a tour of the zoo and saw some very large jungle animals in very small cages. We also checked out the artificial sandy beach and headed back to do some souvenier shopping before catching our flight back to Lima.

Some fun things about Iquitos:

- they don't really have normal cars there, because with the heat, non-air conditioned cars would be unbareable...therefore open buses, motorcycles, and mototaxis (motorcycles with an open cart attached to the back for passengers) fill the streets...i really liked the motortaxis...

- they have floating houses. some people build houses on the amazon and live out there on the water. according to our guide, 'they bathe in the water, cook with the water, swim in the water, and drink the water'...i was very surprised that they can actually drink the river water...

- i would say, on average, everyone in iquitos eats about 3 ice cream cones a day

- we took too many pretty pictures to load here, but dispersed are a few