Pink Dolphins and Poison Darts: An Amazonian Adventure

Arriving in Iquitos

The flight from Lima was quick. When I stepped off the plane, I immediately began to sweat from the intense humidity. My taxi driver was friendly and curious about the United States. My friend’s family is from Iquitos, so we stayed at her uncle’s hostel in downtown Iquitos. Air conditioning and a cold shower have never felt so good. We took a nap and took a walk around the plaza. We ate at Antica, one of my favorite chain restaurants in Peru. I ordered fettuccini alfredo with orange soda. I saw the Hotel Dorado, which was recommended to me by an Amazonian friend from Lima. It was beautiful but far beyond our backpacker budget.

Rainforest Trek

We grabbed a motor taxi to Bellavista River Port. We ate at the market with our local guide, Danny. There were no other tourists in sight, so everyone stared at us with curiosity. We ordered fish, beef, and rice. It was only 11 PEN for three big plates of food. We walked around the market and looked at the fresh food. I had never seen piranhas before. We got on a small wooden boat called Adrianita and rode an hour and a half upstream to the jungle lodge.

Our guide gave us a lovely big room with two beds, mosquito nets, towels, hammocks, and a bathroom. After a lunch of vegetables, rice, and bony fish, we got back in the boat and returned to the Amazon River to visit an animal sanctuary with monkeys, snakes, turtles, and birds. There was a tree full of playful spider monkeys, and I got to hold one. We were filthy after playing with the animals, but it was worth it.

As we returned to the lodge, Nate and I jumped into the cold Amazon River to cool off. As we swam around, a group of pink dolphins came to join us. When we returned to the boat, I asked Danny if there were dangerous animals in the river. He said, “Yes, but it’s unlikely they would hurt you.” As our lodge had no electricity, we ate dinner by torchlight. We were unable to identify the meat, but we ate it anyway. After we finished, Danny told us it was monkey brains, an Amazonian delicacy. We went out one last time in the boat to look at the creepy nocturnal animals.

We woke up extra early to go bird-watching and fishing. We only caught one small fish and saw a bunch of different types of birds. The view of the Amazon River at sunrise was breathtaking. When we returned to the lodge, we washed our boots, chilled, and ate breakfast.

We took off down a different stream deeper into the jungle to visit an Amazonian tribe. Admittedly, it looked like a tourist trap, but it was an enjoyable experience. They taught us to shoot poisonous darts, and I shot the target on my second attempt. We returned to a town called Amazon Paradise. I met a very young girl who was wandering around carrying an alligator. Danny took us into the jungle among the mangroves. He showed us how to swing through the vines. I felt like Tarzan. As we walked through the jungle, the water nearly reached the top of my rubber boots. We saw monkeys, strange fruit, Wimba trees, and rubber trees. Danny swam in the shallow, swampy water, but we did not. Before leaving the lodge, we had a big lunch of catfish, cabbage, and plantain.

Back in Iquitos

We packed our bags and left downstream. On the way back to Iquitos, we took a short nap. We went to Ari’s Restaurant and had a delicious ham and corn pizza (the “American Pizza”) with chocolate and manjarblanco cake and a coconut.

We ate breakfast at the Yellow Rose of Texas. I asked the friendly waitresses about the Amazon golf course. As they were explaining, an old Texan man, the owner, interrupted in broken, incomprehensible Spanish. We took a taxi to the Belén market. Everyone stared at us and clutched tightly onto our backpacks and cameras. When we arrived at the entrance to the Belén floating neighborhood, I started walking down the wooden steps into the village. A shop owner started yelling at me to put away my camera. She told me to enter her store and take photos from the balcony because the people in the village would kill us for my camera. I snapped some shots from her balcony and quickly left the market. We caught a taxi to Quistococha Zoo. We saw wild cats, caimans, snakes, birds, pink dolphins, and strange local fish. It had a beautiful lagoon with a white sand beach that is quite popular with the locals.

After exploring for a while, we returned to the Plaza de Armas and walked along the malecón. As dining options were quite limited in Iquitos, we went to eat lunch at the Yellow Rose of Texas. We sat in the loft, which was plastered with George W. Bush and Barack Obama posters and a massive anaconda skin. It was bizarre to see this in the Amazon rainforest. We stayed to watch Rafael Nadal’s match and then went to a small party in the plaza with music, balloons, and local snacks.

Golfing

We grabbed a taxi to the local golf course, but nobody knew where it was located. We went to the clubhouse and rented clubs and golf balls. The entire bucket of balls was burned because of the slash-and-burn farming around the property. They also gave us machetes because it was an overgrown course by North American or European standards. We shot five holes, but the heat was killing us, and we were playing horribly, especially with the burned balls. The owner helped us to call a taxi back to our hotel. While Nate was napping, I withdrew money from the ATM and bought a t-shirt and a local beer. As we were leaving the hotel, we coincidentally ran into the same taxi driver who drove us from the airport a few days earlier, and he gave us a ride back.