Mr Albert Glynne Howell, a rather portly Anglo Indian gentleman
with perfect diction and a great love for his subject, used to be our Geography
teacher in school in Bombay. It is since those days that I recall the Amazon, Iquitos, Igassu Falls and various aspects of the South American continent.
It was a fairy tale world which one dreamt about and then, as luck would have
it, I studied the Amazon tribes in greater detail for my Social Anthropology Tripos
at Cambridge. I have always been fascinated by this area and here I was in 2015
actually living my dream.
Iquitos is unique in that it is the only
city in the world where one cannot drive into the city – you arrive /
leave either by air or by sea. Strange when you think of it – but once there,
you don’t feel isolated as the sea lanes are thriving and business is brisk. What
is really unusual is that the jungle is right outside the city – it is there
behind you, in front of you and all around you. There is a lot of greenery all
around you.
Iquitos airport is spanking new and very clean. It’s
got separate arrival and departure areas with a few shops selling foodstuff and
local artefacts. There are a few porters too to help you with your baggage. We
arrived into Iquitos by mid morning after a brief halt at Pucallpa, near Yarinacocha. It was a gloomy cloudy day and sure
enough, it started drizzling as we left the Manatee Centre (see separate blog
on this) for the city – the airport is seven kms away from the centre. The countryside
features were so familiar to me as they resemble those
of my country India - the single lane
roads with many banana and coconut trees by the roadside and the general
traffic consisted of tuk-tuks or what we call rickshaws (motorised tricycles with
sitting or luggage areas at the back).
The buildings were a mish mash in that after
seeing a series of mud or aluminium panel huts one gradually found the city’s
buildings were one or more storeys high, often in poor state of maintenance. Poverty was prevalent everywhere.
The
central square reminds one of old movies where one saw drug lords and the
police having a shootout on horseback ! Its rather an anomaly, as on one side
is a very fancy 5 star hotel (cheapest room US$ 249 per night /suite for US$
1,000 – no meals included - imagine in a small town like Iquitos!!) and right at the
other corner of the Plaza de Armas is a steel structure called the “Casa de Fierro”
or Iron Building - Gustave Eiffel built it in Paris in 1860 and it was brought here
in 1890, erected piece by piece. At one time it must have been rather imposing
but now it has some cheap restaurants and chemist shops. 
The river teems with life – there are huge
steamers as ferries which transport goods and humans on deck or with basic accommodation.
A hammock is de rigueur if travelling for a few hours on a ferry. There are many
tugboats and old ships along the coast line. In theory, one can go travel up to the Atlantic
Ocean but most boats are only in Peruvian waters. For long distance travel, one
needs to change ships at the borders. There are two ports – where you get
transport on all sorts of boats.
Like Goa, in India, the whole atmosphere reeks of “What’s
the hurry?” - People laze around,
gossiping and relaxing. There is no real rush visible except near the large
market place which has a huge banana and fish market in the suburb of Belen. Lots
of people buying and selling these and other items. We saw piranhas which were
really large – around 12” long as compared to the 3” ones which we had caught
in the trip. There is also apparently a
floating shanty town here but we did not see it.
By the Cafe Fitzcarraldo, on the river are various
huts which can be rented out to stay. Tour operators, of dubious repute, have
their offices in small shacks nearby. What intrigued me was the presence of
what the Kashmiris, of northern India, call ‘shikaras’ – long covered boats
which glide along the water, taking tourists or locals. They are also used for transporting
vegetables or flowers. Here in Iquitos, there were 7 or 8 of them under the
shade of a tree awaiting customers for a boat ride. Our stop was only for 45
minutes so we did not have time except for a quick walk around the square.
Due to the rubber boom of the late 1880’s onwards
for a few decades, Iquitos had many beautiful mansions with exquisite tiles and
wide roads built.
One building which i really liked was built from 1908-1912
and it stands right by the riverfront. Its a two storey structure with stunning
‘azulejos’ or tile work imported from Portugal having beautiful designs. I tried to enter but found it locked.
There is a cafe bar called Fitzcarraldo – near the river - a tribute
to the 1982 film directed by Werner Herzog starring Klaus Kinski. It’s a real
memory lane here with posters, photographs and other items, like the ship’s
wheel and figurehead, all featuring the movie shot in Iquitos. It’s a film
based on the life of the rubber baron Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald – his adventures
and life in the X1Xth century feature in a book called “Fitzcarrald – Pioneer and
Predator of the Amazon”. This film had an intriguing history with violent
fights and wars taking place during its shooting! Worth reading up on that.
On the way in, we stopped at the port to take the
skiff to board our ship M V Amatista... our guide ensured that we all wore
safety vests and sat comfortably in the 25 seater skiff. The luggage was
brought to the ship in another skiff piloted by the Captain’s 3rd
son who was also our boatman. It was our very first effort in getting into the
skiff – a routine which we were to repeat many a time during the next seven
days whilst we were on the M V Amatista and the Amazon’s Maranon and Ucayali
rivers.
When one leaves Iquitos, and I was lucky in that I
got a window seat, one realizes the immense width and size of the river. From a
distance of say 20,000 ft, the river still appears vast and the islands are
definitely miles wide. The Amazon will always remain an enigma – and one hopes
the rain forest will survive the machinations of Man and his greed. I will
hopefully return one day and travel down another path of the upper Amazon
towards northern Peru.
Just see the majesty of the Andean range , all bleak and brown, with a few snow topped peaks.
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