Tuesday, June 1st, we took an early morning flight to Iquitos in the state of Loreto. The plane landed at a small local airport (after passing through security with my shoes on and a full cafe latte, I could see that the security standards are a little looser here) and we were hit by tropical air. Luckily it wasn't too hot. We were taken to a hotel downtown, where we checked in to great rooms and headed out to explore Iquitos. It reminds me of towns in Baja, lots of corregated metal roofs and store fronts with garage style metal doors. The famous taxi motos are everywhere.
We met two who took us to a great lunch spot where we ate river fish on the Itaya River, which feeds into the Nanay and then into the Amazon. After lunch, we called Armando and his buddy who took us to Belen, a floating shanty town with a famous market.
He found us a boat and we were taken on a trip around.
It's incredibly dirty and bathrooms go straight into the river. Once you get over the fact that it reminds one of the Mumbai slums, you can see that everything is there. There are floating churches and schools, and night clubs, and stores. It's a city and people survive. Marcio was extremely uncomfortable and said on our way to the next stop that he felt like a spoiled white boy...ah, yes, his world is expanding.
Towards the end of the day, we looked at old buildings down by the Itaya River. They were made with these beautiful tile patterns and I took photos of as many as I could. Gillian, Mariana, and I took a walk to the Plaza de Armas and looked over the Iron House. We got lost, asked for directions, and ate ice cream from a street vendor (I read later that night that you shouldn’t eat ice cream off the street-it gets frozen and defrosted a lot and can make you sick.
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