Travelling on from Iquitos
Trip Start
Feb 06, 2007
1
62
332
Trip End
Jan 14, 2008
Iquitos,
Peru
Friday, April 27, 2007
Back in Iquitos at about 4am, Israel organised a motocab for us, and sent us on our way at 4.30am to the Hotel Baltazar. He was concerned for our safety and on the ferry he always made us aware that we were to be on our guard and not to have anything in our pockets. When we got off it was a real scrum, people pushing everywhere, and hands were felt in our pockets, but there was not even a dirty tissue to pinch. Back at the hotel we slept for a while, before breakfast at the Yellow Rose. We decided that we would continue on to Yurimaguas tomorrow and caught the motocab to the wharf where we were inundated with people trying to get us on to their boat. They were not too fussed if we didn't want to go where their boat was going, as long as they could sell us a ticket, At this wharf the only boat for Yurimaguas was one of the Eduardos (Eduardo I, ... Eduardo V), which appear to be fairly new ships with one cargo deck and 2 passenger decks, but we believe there are other smaller cargo boats going from another place
Pic 1
. But just try to find them! We had to wait until someone turned up with the keys for us to have a look at the cabin. In the meantime we were amazed at the physical handling of all the goods. No occupational health and safety here. In the middle of this chaos were two large placid bulls wandering loose and being patted by the workers. Finally the keys arrived and we were shown the double room with bath and aircon. The hammocks on the top deck were 120 soles each. A double with bath was quoted at 500 sols for the two of us ($200 Aussie). As we had no idea as to how crowded it would be, we chose to take the cabin. Probably the price would have been negotiable as we were the only people who opted for a cabin. We refused to pay until a receipt was produced, and somehow the missing carbon paper for the receipt book appeared, as if by magic.
The rest of the day was spent wandering around, chatting to people, and looking at the river from the Malecon and visitng a museum along the Malecon. This museum has fibreglass life-size Indians from various tribes from Peru and Brazil. They were made by plastering people with a mixture of plaster and mud then taking off the mould when dry. We had to pay 5 soles each entry, and this gave us a guide, who spouted his spiel then asked for a tip before rushing off to his next customers. Without a guide you would understand nothing as there are no descriptions of any of the exhibits. We thought it was a rip-off, not worth the money unless you really want to see models of local Indians.For tea we tried 'Chaufa Limokay', at a Chinese restaurant (a Chifa), which turned out to be fried rice and lemon-and-honey chicken. It was yumm
