Iquitos

Iquitos is a city of 500,000 people and there are NO roads to any other major city. EVERYTHING is brought to the city by plane from Lima or by boat all of the way from the Atlantic Ocean. This of course makes it a rather expensive city, relatively speaking of course. This has also resulted in the presence of a very interesting mix of vehicles on the city's streets. In my last post I mentioned the taxi drivers. They do not drive "normal" taxis. The insanely pilot oversized tricycles with 110 cc put-put motors on them. They are a myriad of bright colors and actually offer a cheap, efficient, and somewhat dangerous way to get around the city.

Our initial exploration of the Iquitos led us to The Yellow Rose of Texas. It is located just off of the Paza de Armas on Putumayo street (towards the river). The place is run by an ex-oil and gas engineer named Gerald Mayeaux and the place is overflowing with character. The bar stools are saddles and there is so much stuff on the walls and hanging from the ceiling that it is hard to take it all in. There are a wide variety of dead jungle animals, native artifacts, and thousands of pictures.

While the decoration is completely over the top, it is still not the greatest contributor to the place's character. That award goes to the larger than life personalities of the regular patrons. They can best be described as overweight, middle-aged, ex-patriots from the US, UK, and Oz who have taken up residence in Iquitos because they can live like kings. They all have an opinion about absolutely everything and are more than willing to discuss/argue any point you could possibly bring up.

One guy showed up the night we were there with a giant blue parrot. The guy promptly order two beers, one for himself and the other for the bird. The bird drank right out of the mug. By the end of the night both the guy and the bird were falling out/off of the chair. The bird would slide down the curved back rest of the chair and then have to pull itself back up to the top using its beak.

We also went out to Quistococha, Iquitos' zoo. This was a major stop on the tour for us because Quistococha is a partner zoo with the Perth Zoo where Rebecca works. One of her friends has spent a lot of time in Iquitos working at the zoo and we wanted to see everything that he had done. The zoo has spider monkeys, cougars, jaguars, black jaguars, tons of monkeys, and even Bruno's older bigger cousins.

We also went out to Belen, a section of Iquitos that played host to the movie Fitzcarraldo. About 10% of Belen is built on the shore and about 20% is built on stilts over the river and can be accessed by bridges and catwalks. The remaining 70% is comprised of floating buildings that extend out into the river. Everything that a normal city on land has can be found here. Schools, churches, stores, homes, etc...