Peru - The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget - page 810

9

THE JUNGLE
Whether you look at it up close from the ground, or from a boat, or fly over it in a plane,
the Peruvian selva (jungle) seems endless, though it is actually disappearing at an alarming
rate. Over half of Peru is covered by rainforest, with its eastern regions offering easy access
to the world's largest and most famous jungle, the Amazon . Of the Amazon's original area,
around six million square kilometres (about eighty percent) remains intact, fifteen percent of
which lies in Peru. It's the most biodiverse region on earth, and much that lies beyond the
main waterways remains relatively untouched and unexplored. Jaguars, anteaters and tapirs
roam the forests, huge anacondas live in the swamps and indigenous tribes live deep within
the thick jungle, many surviving primarily by hunting and gathering, as they have done for
thousands of years.
WHERE TO VISIT
Given the breadth and quality of options, it's never easy to decide which bit of the jungle to
head for. Your main criteria will probably be budget, time, ease of access and the nature of
experience you're after. Flying to any of the main jungle towns is surprisingly cheap and, once
you've arrived, a number of excursions can be easily arranged, such as a camping expedition
or travel by canoe or speedboat deep into the wilderness. A costlier, but rewarding, option,
mainly restricted to a few operators based in Iquitos, is to take a river cruise on a larger boat.

metropolis. It has a few sights, more
than its fair share of quirks and some
surprisingly good food.

exhibits on offer, though look out for the
collection of fibreglass statues modelled
on more than eighty people from
different ethnic groups residing in the
jungle surrounding Iquitos. Plaza de Armas

The only real sight in the Plaza de Armas
is the unusual Casa de Fierro (Iron
House). Originally created by Eiffel for
the 1889 Paris exhibition, it was shipped
out to Iquitos in pieces by one of the
rubber barons and erected here in the
1890s. Unfortunately, there is now
a pharmacy downstairs, so the only way
to see the interior is to check out the
overpriced (but fine) restaurant above.

Próspero and around
Strolling along the main shopping street
off the Plaza de Armas, Próspero , you'll
see many fine examples of azulejo -covered
buildings; a useful one is the Casa Cohen ,
the biggest supermarket in the centre.
The name serves as a reminder that the
boom drew a Jewish community to
Iquitos in the early 1900s. There is, in
fact, a small Jewish cemetery within the
main Peruvian cemetery (Av Alfonso
Ugarte, at Av Fanning; daily 8am-7pm),
and both cemeteries are worth a visit, the
former for its elegant tiled and Art Deco
graves and the latter for wildly colourful
and unusual ones - don't miss the tug
boat or the castle.

Along the river
The two best sections of the old riverfront
run parallel to the Plaza de Armas.
Malecón Maldonado, locally known as
El Boulevard , is the busier of the two,
especially at night, as it's full of bars and
restaurants and there's a small dugout
amphitheatre where some kind of
entertainment occurs most nights. The
other section, Malecón Tarapaca , has fine
old mansions with Portuguese azulejos
(tiles), brilliantly extravagant in their
Moorish inspiration. The municipal
Museo Amazónico (Malecón Tarapacá
386, Mon-Fri 9am-12.30pm & 2-5pm;
free, though a guide may try to take
you round, in which case a tip will be
expected; T 065 234 031) has very few

Puerto Belén
Simply follow Próspero south for nine
blocks (or take a motokar , the brand name
for mototaxis here), turn left towards the
river and you'll see the most memorable
barrio in Iquitos, Puerto Belén . It consists
almost entirely of wooden huts raised
on stilts and houses constructed on
floating platforms, which rise and fall to
accommodate the changing water levels.