Our reasons for coming to Iquitos were twofold: 1) It gave us a good reason to take a boat up the Amazon and 2) It is the jumping off point for all things Amazonian jungle in Peru. In our case, this takes the form of a 2 night excursion into the wild jungles with Llaquipallay Expeditions. Let´s start with that…

We had Llaquipallay lined up for months in advance, in fact it was on our wedding registry (Thanks Bob and Lyndy!). Lucy clearly has an eye for these things because despite not being the biggest fan of tours, Llaquipallay turned out to be not only the best tour we´d taken on this trip, but very likely the best tour ever. As if that weren´t enough, they let us stay one night free in their hostel in Iquitos!

Oh, by the way… it´s pronounced “yak ee PIE yay”, which is perfectly reasonable once you´ve been speaking spanish for 5 months.

Our journey would begin white-knuckle cab ride hydroplaning over fresh puddles into the tiny port town of Nauta. As you may remember, Iquitos is the largest city inaccessible by road… unless you´re talking about Nauta. Both cities are mutually and exclusively connected. Otherwise it´s a boat or flight to either. Boarding one of the long, narrow, easily capsizable boats so distinctive to the area, we would spend an hour and a half navigating the rivers. This time of year, the waters are very high, which is very good for navigation between the smaller villiages nearby. High waters open up flooded pathways that would cut our travel time in half. It was a great omen to see many animals on the way, including several amazonian dolphins and a sloth!

After arriving at the lodge and having a nice lunch, we put on our rubber boots and headed out for our first of many jungle adventures.

We would first visit a nearby villiage, which would be somewhat uneventful if it weren´t for the family with the sloth! We took turns holding the youngster, everyone going “awww” with every yawn. Then there was the other family with even more sloths! Yep, 3 sloths, a male and female 3 toed, and a darling little 2 toed. We all took turns making dreams come true by holding these clingy beauties. The concensus was that they´re softer than you´d imagine… and maybe a little heavier.

After our sloth snuggle sesh, we would stop to take a dip in the river. This would be the “swimming with dolphins” portion of the trip, though the dolphins were still some 100 feet away or more. Not unpleasant, but swimming in opaque waters the color of milk chocolate is a little unsettling.

After dinner we would take to the waterways under the cover of darkness, in search of caiman and giant amazonian bullfrogs. We drifted silently in those black waters, shining our flashlights into the leafy shores, searching for pairs of shining eyes. Our guide, Tony, would excitedly tell us to turn out our lights, and we would creep up towards some subtle signs… Tony leans forward out of the boat, reaches his hands into the water… and with great thrashing and boyish giggling, he pulls a beautiful little caiman out of the water. A caiman is the amazonian version of an alligator, teeth and all. This one was a small one, but the guide of the second boat pulled out a much larger one. We took turns touching it´s rubbery scales. Too cool.

We then took our adventure online to find bullfrogs. I don´t know how these guys do it, but soon enough, we would find a huge specimen.

The next morning would host one of the strangest and joyful moments ever. Tony and the boat would take us to “monkey island”. As we pulled up, a great commotion erupted in the canopy, and 4 monkeys came running. The strange part of this is that they weren´t a colony or family of monkeys, per se… they were 4 drastically different monkeys: a remarkable red faced spider monkey, a capuchin, a red howler, and another that may have been a female capuchin. There is a picture included below of a natural impossibility: 4 different brands of monkeys swingin together. Story goes that they were brought there as rescues, and live happily together, in fact other wild monkeys have joined them. As we pulled up, the monkeys reached out to get fruit from the guides, offered at the end of boat oars… but clearly it wasn´t enough for the hauntingly human spider and the capuchin, and these brave fellas jumped into the boat and quickly found the rest of the food. The overly friendly male capuchin jumped quickly in my lap and went to work on a banana and a piece of papaya… he then stole my sunglasses and proceeded to dismantle them. When the guides reached in to try to take them back, I insisted that they not try… despite the cuteness of the situation, monkeys are dangerous, and of course when the guide reached in, the capuchin freaked out and ran all over the boat. Oh well, hopefully he figured out how to wear them.

I´ve never experienced monkeys so close. I found the nimble spider to be spellbinding, so human in its bipedal gait and its facial expression. Remarkable with it´s incredibly limblike use of its tail.

Our next stop was more than a little frightening. We stopped at a neighboring lodge where we would see a “tigretta”. I imagined we´d see some kind of a little tiger in a cage. Nope, we walked in and there´s a fucking oscelot just stalking around the house. Apparently, the thing was in heat, and was acting really erratically. It circled us, inches overhead, climbing in the airspace below the large thatched roof. It climbed down to the floor, and approached each of us in turn, growling strangely. Sure, an oscelot isn´t a huge animal, but a cat the size of a laborador isn´t funny business.

This evening would be camping night. After an arduously long boat ride to a remote outpost, we would make camp with hammocks and mosquito nets. After a semi-successful piranha fishing trip (we caught fish, though they weren´t pirahna), the guides cooked us a large meal, and we relaxed for all of 30 seconds before heading back out for more caimen hunting. This time, tony would pull a beautifully largish one from the water. After returning to camp, we would find a huge tarantula and another bullfrog before swinging to sleep in our hammocks to the chorus of a million creaks, croaks and ribbits.

After a quick breakfast of too many hard boiled eggs and boiled potatoes, we made our way back to the lodge, stopping to visit a wild colony of gold colored monkeys, dangerously eating heavy nuts overhead, and a tour through a hidden garden of, for lack of a better word, water cabbage.

That´s a lot of action for 3 days, 2 nights. Granted, some of the experiences were canned, but we were glad to have them.

Iquitos itself was interesting, if a little rough. The town had a boom period based on rubber in the wayback. Much of the opulence of the heyday is still evident in the many beautifully tiled buildings on the riverfront – grand rooms with slowly turning ceiling fans, ornately tiled floors and balcony dining areas.

Just a few blocks from our hostel would be the somewhat infamous Belen market. The market itself isn´t unlike many of them down here down south, except that when Belen runs out of land as it heads for the river – the market and the neighborhood of Belen itself takes to floating. It´s said that in the deeper parts of the market, one can find endangered species, for pets and for pots… which is exactly why we didn´t look too hard. Besides, it´s probably one of the filthiest markets we´ve ever been in, with frightening puddles of vegetable waste and animal parts to dodge at every step of the way. No pictures… we didn´t want to get robbed.

There are a lot of animal rescues around here, some of them more legit than others. The Pilpintuwasi butterfly farm and animal rescue would be more of the legit style. At Pilpintuwasi we would see lots of great monkeys and sloths, given lots of room, lots of privacy, and a lot of opportunities for rehabilitation. This included a rather charming tapir, a stunning jaguar, and a rather charismatic group of capuchin monkeys, including “Lucy”, a smiling, afroed little female whos teeth were filed down, who found former employment as a pickpocket. She spent her time smiling at us, looking at us from between her legs, and dancing with abandon. They also had a family of Red Faced Uakari monkeys who ran free on the property… amazing, though, you know, kind of primaly frightening.

 

And then, of course, there was a not-so-legit ones. A man with a cigarette and a cell phone guiding you from cage to cage, putting a sloth, or a snake, or a turtle in your hands. We took a few pictures, but otherwise got out of there as quickly as possible, for fear that the sadness of the animals would never leave us.

It´s the way of things down here. Some people fight to protect their animals, some people exploit them for quick sale, some people fight to keep things clean, but most fling empty bottles of soda from car windows with a heartbreaking ease.