Wandering Words: Snapshots from the jungle, part 2: Life in the selva

When we stepped off the river boat, we had arrived in Iquitos, the heart of the Peruvian jungle. The city is surrounded by various rivers on all sides, so the heart of city (and tourist) life is the tree-lined waterfront promenade. Every night the walkway would fill with folks out for a stroll, the bars would fill with people-watchers, and the local capoeira (Brazilian dance/karate) club would come out to practice on the pier. The promenade also hosts a number of colonial-era tiled casonas, the mansion-like houses that were once home to the traders who made it rich off Iquitos' early rubber business.

But not everyone can live in a casona... thousands of Iquitos' inhabitants reside in Belén, a shantytown that is literally floating for ten months out of the year.

These houses are at the mercy of the Amazon's water levels. In June and July, the above waterway would be a normal city street, complete with pedestrians and buses, but the river reigns the rest of the year. Puttering in between the maze of houses in our motorized canoe, I kept pondering the endless list of potential complications of living in a house surrounded by (or, not uncommonly, inundated with) water. Although some of the houses are truly floating, the majority merely stand on very tall stilts. Last year the Amazon set records for flood levels, and the watermarks on the Belén houses made plain that many would've had 3+ feet of water in them. But that's life, and the residents simply live with land-housed relatives for a few months, or hike up their hammocks a couple extra feet until the water recedes.

The most common form of transport in Belén, and in Iquitos in general, are long wooden canoes with an outboard motor nailed onto the stern. Sometimes the boat driver has to pause the journey momentarily in order to re-nail the motor into place - normal. It is also totally normal for these passenger boats to pass under "bridges" (glorified wooden planks haphazardly nailed as footpaths across smaller canals) so low that all boat riders have to lay flat in the bottom of the boat to avoid decapitation. My sun-umbrella-holding friend in the photo below kindly showed me how it was done in enough time to avoid that sad fate - no thanks to the boat captain, who simply barreled forward at full speed.

When on land, Iquitos-ians use only open-air transportation: the breeze is the only saving grace in the otherwise constantly humid jungle heat. Consequently, none of the mototaxis have doors, and the buses are like trolleys: no windows or doors!

The other way to stay cool in the selva? Swimming of course! While the water is decidedly brown, a few parasites might even be worth it for a respite from the ubiquitous sweatiness. When we came across these niños having a ball in the river on our way back from the butterfly reserve, Kelsey couldn't resist joining in:

Our group spent a different day relaxing at a bathwater-warm jungle laguna, and another afternoon we cooled off at a tropical resort-esque swimming pool near the city. The pool was hidden in the midst of a lush green garden, complete with a five-story treehouse that seriously belonged in "Swiss Family Robinson." We contemplated giving up our hostel beds and permanently relocating to this arboreal dream-home, but the owners informed us that sleeping in the treehouse was 100% prohibido.

Crushed, we settled for a one-night sojourn to a jungle lodge a two-hour boatride from Iquitos. The coolest part about those accommodations was when it poured rain at night, and we got to fall asleep to the beautiful sound of water falling on the thatch-leaf roof. Surprisingly, no leaks!

Part of our jungle lodge tour was a visit to a community of indigenous Yaguas people. Once you get over the extreme cheesiness/awkwardness of the whole tourist-visiting-"natives" concept, there's still some interesting cultural knowledge to be gained from the experience. For example, upon arrival at the village we were offered a traditional drink. I was semi-listening to the guide's explanation while I took in my surroundings, and of course happily tried what I understood to be a liquid made from yuca. It was strangely sour and unlike anything I'd had before, but hey, try everything once right? Clearly I should've paid closer attention, since Amanda later informed me that was the famous traditional Peruvian drink made by old ladies who sit around and chew the yuca, re-spit it out into a bowl, and let it ferment until it's somehow acceptable to drink. Awesome. But, we did get to shoot extremely cool blow-dart guns, so I guess I came out even.