Iquitos/Amazons recap

Seguido en Español

We were in Iquitos from 6/13/14 through 6/18/14. This is a city that is just a 10 minute boat ride away from the Amazon river. It is very hot and humid, and very much reminded me of coastal Central America.

There were some amazing nonprofits and government agencies in Iquitos. I was very impressed with the efforts that the people involved in human rights here made. There is a particularly poor shanty town community here called Belen where much of the human trafficking happens (which is primarily in logging and the sex industry). This community is on the shore of the main river that separates Iquitos from the Amazon. When that river floods every year, these people are displaced from their homes. The government subsidizes their building material costs and the costs of construction, but does not subsidize a location that would allow the community to not have to rebuild and repair yearly. 

We arrived just before the weekend, and took the weekend to do some sight-seeing. Saturday we took a day-long boat tour of the Amazon. We got to go to a wildlife refuge for animals that had been domesticated and then were no longer wanted by their owners. I had a little capuchin monkey friend that decided to be my scarf for the time we were there. I also got to hold a baby sloth, who - looking back on it - was very distressed about a leaf stuck on its left claw. There was also a toucan - those things make very loud clacking noises with their beaks, it was kind of terrifying to have it on my arm. 

We also got to meet some Amazonian tribe members, shoot a blowgun, do a traditional dance, and get our faces painted with red achiote stripes. We saw a humongous tree, ate jungle cuisine (aka this fish -and later this fish), and fished for piranhas (not really fished, more like watched them attack the chicken bits we put on a string).

Here are pictures of the Amazon trip:

Shooting a blowgun.
Disparando una cerbatana.