I think it’s fairly common knowledge that the Amazon River and the surrounding drainage basin are both massive. Incomprehensibly so. Let me start with a few quick facts:

• 40% of the entire continent of South America drains into the Amazon Basin
• The river, at its narrowest, is 1.6KM (1 mile) wide
• The flow of the Amazon is greater than the next 7 largest rivers COMBINED
• For perspective on the last fact, by my math (may be flawed) the Amazon could fill Lake Michigan in 17 seconds!
• 1/3 of all animal species on the face of the planet are found in the Amazon Basin
• The Amazon accounts for 20% of the world’s river flow

These facts do little to reveal the true scope of the Amazon and its drainage basin. I am quite simply, awestruck, after realizing that I was in constant motion for 4 days and only saw a sliver of this massive ecosystem.

The journey WAS the destination

I feel quite fortunate that this is my life. Imagine, sitting around the house one day and simply deciding to go! With no real plan we left the next Tuesday. Transport in Peru can be somewhat challenging, long bus rides cover vast distances at a fairly slow pace. Bus rides are quite commonly nine hours at a minimum. We decided that we would get a bus from Trujillo to Chacapoyas and from there make our way to Tarapoto and finally Yurimaquas where we would arrange passage on the river to Iquitos. It ended up working out surprisingly well.

15 hours on a bus got us to our first stop. Chachapoyas turned out to be an incredible place with many natural wonders and archaeological sites on offer. The area is best known for the ancient ruins of Kuelap, but we opted instead to visit the Sarcophagi of Karajía(click to embiggen).

We also did a bit of spelunking ‘ghetto style’ where our guide was equipped with a car battery in a backpack which was connected to a homemade lamp with a couple strands of discarded baling wire.

From Chachapoyas we backtracked a little bit to the crossroads town of Pedro Ruiz to catch a bus onward to Tarapoto. At the bus terminal, a lady had called the police to report the theft of her cell phone. She was pointing fingers, making accusations and demanded that the police do something. Eventually they gave in and started searching all of the males for the cell phone. As people were done being searched and boarded the bus, someone came back from the bus with her cell phone that they had found in her seat. This incident set the tone for the next eight hours on the bus.

We overnighted in Tarapoto and the next morning arranged transport to Yurimaguas. We knew that the boat trips between Yurimaguas and Iquitos are fairly spartan, so we knew that we would need to be gathering supplies. We had originally planned on spending the night in Yurimaguas so that we would have time to procure everything we would need (hammocks, rain gear, eating utensils, water and wine) but that proved to be unnecessary as out moto-taxi driver was more than willing to earn a commission by taking us to a local outfitter. The few soles extra that we spent by going with him was well worth it!

Everything that we had read indicated that this trip would likely take three to five days, so with our supplies purchased and passage booked we settled in for the cruise. We left Yurimaguas at sunset and hadn’t even pulled out of port yet before our first river dolphin sighting.

We ended up only taking two days to get to Iquitos, but it was a very interesting two days with many stops made to load and unload cargo at remote Amazonian villages along the river. By mid-morning on the second day we had made it to the confluence of the rivers Marañón and Ucayali which come together to officially start the Amazon. From there it was only a few hours to Iquitos.

The largest city in the world inaccessible by road

Iquitos turned out to be very interesting. It’s quite a scene, to say the least. We were surprised by the expat community there with an English language newspaper! We met a very interesting character who happened to be the proprietor of a floating bar/restaurant/hostel. I visited the shantytown of Belen, and we HAD to visit Casa Fitzcarralldo (which turned out to be somewhat disappointing). All in all a very rewarding trip!

Support local business owners!

Iquitos is fairly heavily touristed. One thing that has always bothered me about places that get a lot of tourist traffic is the number of foreign business that spring up to cater to these tourists. Travel agencies, booking offices, tour companies, hotels and restaurants are nearly all foreign owned so the locals end up benefiting very little. Whenever possible, I prefer to support locals who are often freelancers. While in Iquitos, we happened to meet a jungle guide from a nearby village. He spoke very good English and was quite friendly and comes highly recommended by past clients. His name is Pedro, but he’s known as “Wolf”. If you ever need a jungle guide in Iquitos, and especially if you don’t want to take some pre-packaged tour, you should get in contact with Pedro. He can be reached by email at pedro_wildlife AT hotmail DOT com or on facebook (Pedro Peña) in Iquitos, Peru. Seriously, this guy can set you up with whatever, whether it’s an ayahuasca ceremony, hallucenogenic toad licking or remote wildlife viewing, he’s your guy.

And now, the photos:

My first time traveling to Peru could have easily been my last. My first impression of Peru was the beachside resort village of Mancora. Mancora embodies everything that is horrible about over-touristed travel destinations, including the worst hostel ever!

Mancora is well located on the coast of northern Peru. The beach is actually quite nice, has great surf and predictable afternoon breezes that

photo: Theodore Scott on flickr

So, why do I think Mancora is so horrible, and what about this hideous hostel experience? First, the beach in Mancora isn’t open and accessible without going through either a hotel or a restaurant, it’s like trying to get out of a casino.

And the hostel…so, here’s the deal: I had made the mistake of booking a Loki hostel ahead of my arrival in Mancora. Booking ahead meant that the money was already spent…always a risk, I know, but the pictures looked nice, so I went for it. Loki hostels are a chain operating in Bolivia and Peru. They’re foreign owned, operate in a handful of already over-touristed destinations and add to the ugliness of tourism.

Upon checking in, I was immediately adorned with a wrist band that I would need to get in and out of the gate. Now, I can understand that maybe management thinks that this practice is in my best interest – you know, keeping the “bad” people out, but in reality, the wrist bands are about branding for Loki. This presents two problems. 1) I can be immediately identified by thieves and other ne’er do wells as a patron of Loki and marked as someone who must be an absolute sucker. 2) I’m forced now to be a walking advertisement for what amounts to be a corporate franchise. A bit ironic, methinks.

So, having been marked with the Loki brand, I was now free to roam the dusty streets of Mancora. I like beer. I like to drink beer poolside. Loki has a pool but their beer selection is limited and the prices are hyper-inflated. I did what any logical person would do and purchased some beer at the bodega outside the gate. I wasn’t allowed to take the beer back inside the hallowed Loki grounds.

The folks at Loki claim:

We are a group of backpackers
who met in Lima, Peru and over a
number of nights out decided to build
a hostel

I wonder if they, as a “group of backpackers” would like to be treated the way they treat their customers?

Ultimately, I travel for the experience. Without immersing myself in the local culture, I may as well stay home. Bullfighting is an important part of Peruvian culture, though it is losing favor. I can’t say that I’m glad that it happens, but I can say that I’m glad for the experience.

Not to judge, not to condemn no condone but merely to observe

If you’re a world traveler, you’ll almost inevitably be asked “what is your favorite place?” when talking to people who don’t travel a lot. It’s a fair question for sure, but there are no easy answers. My answers are usually contextually based or tongue-in-cheek. That’s a tactic of mine which serves as a shortcut to really thinking about something in depth. If I had to think about my favorite place on earth, and answer honestly, I guess I haven’t been there yet. Maybe that’s what motivates me to keep exploring.

It’s not really about the places.

Travel is more about experiences and people. You meet the most interesting people while you’re traveling. Not that you don’t meet interesting people at home, but when you’re surrounded by the familiar, I believe you’re less likely to be open to the unfamiliar. My own story has become irreversibly entwined with the stories of others. Here’s a short list of some of the most interesting people I have met on the road.

• Guy

Airport and hotel bars are consistently good for meeting interesting people. A bar in a hotel that’s at the airport (I don’t always sleep in the terminal) is a veritable Petri dish full of interesting people. It was at the DFW Hyatt that I met a DEA agent named Guy.

At first, Guy sounded like a bit of a self-aggrandizing blowhard, someone who probably watched too many Mexican Narco films. Guy soon proved to be a wealth of knowledge on the drug trade in Mexico, how it works and what is being done. I couldn’t pull myself away from the conversation. My hunger for knowledge on a topic that seems so important, yet gets hardly any press coverage took over and I found myself asking questions, the answers to which prompted even more questions. It turned into a late night before an early flight, but was worth it for a free education on issues that matter.

• Bionic Russ

The Big Bend region of Texas is full of characters. It’s worth a trip to Terlingua just to meet the eccentric people who seem to gravitate there. Bionic Russ is a character among characters. I met Russ in a motel in Alpine, Texas. He and his wife had moved there to escape the cold of Wyoming winters. See, Russ had had knee replacement surgery. The way Russ told the story, one cold morning he was out feeding his cattle and his new titanium knees froze from the cold. His knees locked up and he was unable to walk. He crawled through the snow for more than a 1/4 mile. When he got to the house, he knocked on the door only to have his wife open the door and look right over him. He told her to look down, and rather than immediately help him in out of the cold, she demanded an explanation of what the hell he was doing. Russ added quite a bit of animation to the story, so it was much better to hear first hand than to read about second hand, but you get the idea.

• Jordan

Jordan was a would-be bone smuggler, and taught me that slowing down and not being in any particular hurry can pay huge dividends in friendship and camaraderie. She was carrying some turtle shells she had collected on a beach in Ecuador. On her trip south, Peruvian customs hadn’t given her any grief at all about them so she figured Chile would be as easy. She figured wrong. I shared a combi with Jordan (and three other people) from Tacna, Peru across the Chilean border to Arica, Chile. When Chilean customs shook her down because of the turtle shells, our combi driver wanted to leave her. At that point, Jordan’s problem wasn’t my problem and I wasn’t keen on waiting out the customs ordeal in the hot Atacama desert sun. For a brief moment, I considered acquiescing to the driver’s demands to get in the car and go, but then I applied a little bit of compassion to the situation. Having had my fair share of customs shake-downs over the years, it was easy to take a stand for what was right. The driver was willing to give up one fare, but not two, so he waited for Jordan. Jordan and I instantly became great friends, and this encounter, however brief is one of my most fond travel memories.

• Honorable mentions:

Elyse – my favorite bar tender in all of Taiwan. Your smile and lively spirit will be with me, always.
Bily – Formerly a Cruise ship bar tender, now bar owner in Huanchaco – your story is an inspiration!
Choco – A passionate and entertaining tour guide. Book him for your tour of any of the archaeological sites in Northern Peru.