Iquitos, Peru, our Amazon destination for this leg of the tour, is quite unique in the world: it’s the largest city that is inaccessible by road. One arrives to Iquitos either by a quick hour-and-a-half flight from Lima, or by way of a leisurely multi-day trip up the Amazon, swinging in a hammock aboard a cargo boat. Of course, we chose the latter. Our adventure, then, begins in Yurimaguas.
So, the first thing that generally happens when you arrive in a bus station down here, especially if you’re clearly a tourist, is that you’re overrun by many offers, smiling faces, hostel deals, cab rides and tours – and nowhere was this more true than when we arrived in our departure town of Yurimaguas. We’re exhausted, confused, and in a lot of pain over our 11 hour minivan ordeal getting here, and all these hustlers are coming at you like zombies before you can figure out where the hell you’re supposed to be. When we heard “Eduardo Boat” in the crowd, it ended up being something of a blessing. For the next few days, “Winston” would be our personal cab driver and concierge. Within an hour’s time we had a hostel, a hammock, and a friend to guide us through the process of securing a cabin on the next outgoing boat (though that would have to wait for the next morning, when the boat arrived at port).
Yurimaguas, by the way, was actually pretty fun. It was just the kind of strange action you hope for rolling up to some new stretch of the world — tuk-tuks swarm the streets, markets stretch for blocks, and a layer of fresh rain on the pavement give everything that balmy, exciting, colorful character that ideas of Amazonia might evoke.
The boats, in our case the “Bruno”, are powerful 3 story cargo boats delivering goods from Yurimaguas to Iquitos and back with a few stops in between. The first floor is entirely cargo – tons of rice, loads of plantains, huge bags of a tough local fruit with little payoff called the aguaje, a vehicle or two, and who knows what else. The second level is almost entirely slung with hundreds of hammocks, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and in our case, more eggs than I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not sure what a bazillion of anything looks like, but there must have been that many eggs. The third floor is largely open to the sky, and is where the bridge, the cabins, and a smaller area for 20 or so hammocks. We took some advice and got a cabin which has the benefit of a locked door for your belongings, but still granted you rights to your hammock for the long slow days. The cabin also came with special treatment regarding food — the porter would deliver meals to us in fast food containers, saving us the trouble of standing in the long lines.
Though they give you a departure time, the boat doesn’t leave port until it’s fully loaded, and stories have it that this can take several days. Fortunately, they let you stay aboard and feed you as long as you’re on it, but in our case it wasn’t too much of a problem — the ship pulled out at dawn, only about 12 hours behind prediction. Ok, there was one small problem… The motion as I slept coupled with a little overindulgence the night before resulted in a violent fit of vomiting. Particularly weird because I haven’t puked in over a decade. We’ll leave out the particulars on the kinds of inconveniences this caused us…
There’s not much to say about the trip, in a good way. It was dreamy, slow, full of long warm hours in the hammock, lots of reading, and good conversation with strange new people, sharing long and colorful sunsets over the river. Occasionally the ship would pull up to tiny, stilted villages along the great river, exchange a few goods and move on, and though it was allowed to get off and look around, the focused and largely disinterested staff didn’t really leave you feeling confident about how long they’d be there, so we generally avoided the risk of being left behind and stayed onboard.
Though largely tranquil, the our third floor overhang was rather crowded by a large and imposing traveling group of a dozen young and restless Colombian cumbia musicians and their entourage of jugglers, crust punks, and tagalongs. It’s a mixed bag with this kind of thing, of course, and while a lively evening performance was welcomed by the entire boat, an overall inconsideration regarding space, smoke, and flute / hand drum practice left a little to be desired.
After 3 relaxing nights aboard the Hugo we arrive in Iquitos in a beautiful light rain at 5 am. Of course, our mommas taught us way damn better than to step into some seedy riverside port before the sun and the police wake up, so we took our time packing up, letting the cargo unload, and eventually boarded a semi-sinking boat taxi that would take us to another small port where we would wade through the knee deep trash that would typify many of the riverside areas in this, a town of historic wealth and modern vulgarity, Iquitos.
