Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Transport
15
LAN
C4
16
Star Perú
C3
BELÉN
At the southeast end of town is this floating shantytown, consisting of scores of huts, built
on rafts, which rise and fall with the river. During the dry season, these rafts sit on the
river mud and are dirty, but most of the year they float - a colorful and exotic sight.
Around 7000 people live here, and canoes float from hut to hut selling and trading jungle
produce. The best time to visit the shantytown is at 7am, when villagers arrive to sell their
produce. To get here, take a cab to 'Los Chinos,' walk to the port and hire a canoe to take
you around.
Belén mercado
(market; at Hurtado & Jr 9 de Diciembre)
is a raucous, crowded affair where
all kinds of strange and exotic products are sold. Remember to watch your wallet.
| Neighborhood
BIBLIOTECA AMAZÓNICA
(cnr Malecón Maldonado & Morona; admission for both S3; Mon-Fri)
An old building on the
corner houses this library, which contains the largest collection of historical documents in
the Amazon Basin. In the same building is the small
Museo Etnográfico
Offline map
Google map
. This museum has life-sized fiberglass casts of members of various Amazon
tribes.
| Library
Herzog's Amazon
Eccentric German director Werner Herzog shot two movies in Peru's jungle -
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
(1972) and
Fitzcarraldo
(1982) - about men facing nature in the Amazon. The movies are cult favorites among cinema fans,
but the fact that Herzog even survived the shoots is what's remarkable.
For starters, there was the leading man: Klaus Kinski, a volatile actor prone to fits of rage. During the filming of
Aguirre,
he had altercations with an extra and, later, a cameraman - after which he tried to desert the shoot on a
speedboat. (To make him stay, Herzog threatened him with a rifle.) Later, while filming
Fitzcarraldo,
Kinski so ant-
agonized the Matsiguenka tribespeople working as extras that one of them offered to murder him. Then there was
