Livin' The Dream: Over the river and through the woods…to Iquitos I go

When I reached the city of Yurimaguas I had made it about half way to my new home in Iquitos, but as the city is unreachable by road, I had to continue by boat. Throughout my time in Peru I always asked people who had taken this boat trip in the past how long the trip was and I always got different answers. When I boarded the boat, I was prepared for anywhere between 2 and 5 days in my hammock. The boat was kind of interesting as it was cargo and livestock on the first floor while the second two floors were for passengers, but had no sleeping quarters, just space to hang hammocks.

Livestock on my boat

My bed, workspace, and relaxing area for 3 days

Typically things in Peru run a bit behind schedule, so when I heard my boat was going to be leaving at noon on a Tuesday, I figured that meant we would be leaving sometime in the afternoon. Nonetheless, I had to be there on time to reserve a space for my hammock. When 12 o’clock rolled around I got notice that the boat wouldn’t be leaving until 4…typical! Then at 4, they told me the boat would be leaving at 6. 6 o’clock came and passed and the new target departure time was midnight…12 hours behind! At that point I was sleeping, but when I woke up in the morning, I found we hadn’t moved an inch. I was a little concerned we weren’t ever going to leave, but I was assured once a final shipment of eggs was loaded we would be on our way. 1 pm, a delay of 25 hours, we were finally on our way for a trip that I was now told would take 2 days, but I was still a little unsure if I should trust that estimate or not.

I guess my time spent in port wasn’t completely wasted as I actually enjoyed watching the workers loading and unloading the boats in the port. I was amazed at how hard the men worked during the day. Temperatures were around 90 degrees and these guys not only walked, but ran with up to two 50kg rice sacks on their backs, which is about 220 pounds! What was more surprising was after asking around a little bit, I learned that for each bag that was loaded or unloaded a worker would be paid 17 cents US. It looked like incredibly hard work for next to nothing in pay. It made me really happy that I had the opportunity to go to college.

Men hard at work loading my boat with cargo

Money earned for carrying this bag: 17 cents US

Once underway, it was days of endless river, jungle, and small riverside communities. I entertained myself by watching the little tiny boats cruising up and down the river. They seemed to come out of nowhere and with no towns visibly near, I was always confused as to where they were going.

One of the many small boats that appeared from nowhere on the Amazon

Boats carved from tree trunks

The setting sun over the Amazon

Throughout the trip we stopped every few hours at different villages along the way so that we could load or unload cargo. It was always fun to see what would be coming on board next. One night we apparently stopped to pick up some bananas because I was awaken to this:

A boatload of bananas (pun intended)

At every port people were eager to board to sell their products to people traveling downriver. You never knew what they were going to be selling at the next port!

Villagers ready to storm our boat with products to sell

The trip surprisingly went by relatively fast and about 55 hours after we started moving, we finally made it to Iquitos, a huge, sprawling city in the middle of vast untouched jungle.