There aren´t any roads outta here

Travel is hard work: Dorthe having an afternoon siesta amongst all our gear on the way to Iquitos

We just arrived in Iquitos, Peru this morning from Pullcalpa, after a sweaty five nights hanging in a hammock on board a cargo ship filled with amazonian hardwood, pigs, chickens, parakites for the pet trade, more than 200 locals swinging away in hammocks as well, and, of course, the ubiquitos bananas (yup, it was a banana boat!). Iquitos is an interesting place - it is the biggest city in the world that has no highways to connect it to the rest of the world. From here, its 3,700km down the river to the mouth, and yet, even this far from the ocean, the amazon is navigable by ocean going vessels - the US used to have a destroyer stationed here as part of the "War" on "Terror", until the Peruvians told them to go home. And just to cap it all off, the city of 400,000 has 22,000 motocycles, (mainly Asian style tricycle-motortaxis), which lends a mad atmosphere to the place.

We weren´t ready for the Amazon - after the altiplano the Amazon just suddenly dumped on us like the phenomenonal tropical rain that you get in these parts. We went to sleep after watching a beautful sunset over the cold, barren heights of the altiplano around Huancayo, and awoke in the hot, humid, green (how long has it beeen since we´ve seen green?) jungles of the Amazon, and the dusty riverside port of Pullcalpa.

Getting a boat down the river wasn´t as bad as we had thought it might be - we had the choice of two, and choose the M/F Tucan, leaving our luggage in the care of a couple of young English hippies, and headed back into town to buy hammocks to sleep in, and supplies. A quick internet posting, and then back to the boat, and we were away, off down the biggest river of them all.

The trip was only supposed to take three days, but in true Sth American style, it ended up taking five nights - we are currently in the dry season, and so the water level is pretty low, meaning that we were unable to sail through the night. That of course didn´t stop us from trying, and the inevitable grounding (with the boat going at full pace) came as quite a shock to most people on board. This created a mad rush for the lifejackets, as, in true titanic form, there were approximately three times as many passengers as lifejackets. Fortunately, they weren´t required, and after about half an hour, we managed to float free of our submerged sandbar. Those people that had managed to score a lifejacket slept with them close by that night!

Life on board the boat was pretty interesting. We were inevitably woken at about 5:45am, shortly before dawn, by the two roosters on board having a crowing contest. Normally, I just rolled over and went back to sleep until breafast (watery porridge) at 6:30am. Then after it started getting hot about 9am, and the birdlife had clamed down (dawn is the best time to see birds here in the Amazon), we would normally nap until lunch at noon. The afternoons were generally too hot to sleep unfortunately - often reaching into the mid thirties in the shade of the boat! The only real relief were the dirty smelly showers of cold river water on board - after an entire day of sweating, they were fantastic! Normally about 4pm the power would come on, and the on board bar would crank up the stereo, much to the delight of pretty much everyone on board - much dancing, yelling and singing normally accompanied the first song played, gringos included. And then after the standard spectacular amazon sunset, and a very plain dinner, we would be treated to two or three pirated DVDs, and then to bed, and try not to get savaged too much by the mosquitos.

But it was pretty much a case of making your own entertainment for the time we were on board - after three to four days, we all got excited about pretty much anything - watching the kids fishing over the sides, for example, often brought great cheers as a fish was hooked out of the water, only to fall off as they tried to haul it up the side of the boat. Of course, coming into a port village along also made for a couple of hours entertainment, watching people loading more bananans on board, and the odd kid or two fall off the gangplank and into the river! Or the really spectacular entertainment was the afternoon tropical rainstorm - fifteen minutes of sheer fury, where it was impossible to tell where the river ended and the sky began. Fantastic!

And eventually, after many games of backgammon, giving the local children a lesson in checkers, several spanish language newspapers (that´s a good solid days reading with a dictionary) and more than catching up on our share of sleep, we arrive in Iquitos. But this was only the start of our journey - tomorrow we get back on the boats again - tomorrow we visit three countries - Peru, Colombia, and Brasil, at the triple frontier. And then on, down the big river, towards the sea......

Lastly, A "It pays to be a gringo sometimes" story: We are in the process of booking a trip with a jungle lodge in Brasil, and needed to fax some documents to them. We went to a call center here to try and do it, and after much trying, we unable to succeed - we reckoned that their phonelines were bung. It was expensive too - 10 Soles. We decided to try another place, and walked back to the centre of Iquitos. On the way, we passed the huge five star hotel here, and Dorthe suggested "If it doesn´t work at this other place, maybe we should try the hotel?" "Lets do the hotel first". We stroll into the hotel, two scummy sweat soaked backpackers, and walk up to reception. Rooms here cost from US$150 - $400 per night. One of the ladies there ignores the five locals waiting in line and asks us how she can help. Disregarding our spanish, we play up the gringo card and ask her if she speaks english, then explain that we´d like to send a fax to Brasil. "Sure. No problem". She takes it to the fax - we then realise that it will probably cost a fortune in such a hotel, run over and ask how much it costs. "Oh, don´t worry about it", she says, assuming that being gringos, we were staying there. She sends the fax, we thank her, and walk straight back out the front door, with ten Soles in our pockets that wouldn´t have had otherwise. After getting charged extra because we are gringos for the last five months, we FINALLY got our own back - that more than makes up for a few overpriced taxi rides!!! :-)