Downtown Iquitos

Arrived in Iquitos at 4pm on a fast boat from Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa is a little Peruvian village across the border from Tabatinga. To get to Santa Rosa we had to take a boat from the Tabatinga port. To get the Peruvian entry stamp the border guard had to be waken up. All this happened in total darkness at 3am in the morning.

Journey in the speed boat reminded a bit flying in an airplane: there was little room to stretch one´s legs and twice food was served. Here they drink Inca Cola and the default coffee here contains even more milk than in Brazil.

The boat dashed in 41 km/h on average over the Amazon and in 10 hours we reached Iquitos.

Iquitos is the largest city in the world with no road connection to the outside world. Our original plan was to continue along the Napo river to Coca, Ecuador. But now it seems (as feared) that this trip would take about 7 days and we can start only Saturday or Monday (unclear, maybe even later). It seems relatively easy to reach Santa Clotilde as there are daily fast boats, but from St. Clotilde to Pantojas (the border town to Ecuador) only slow boats go. We went to see the boat that is expected to leave on Saturaday the earliest and it looked quite scary (small and dirty).

One other option to continue along the Amazon is to go to Yurimaguas (Peru), 3 days by slow boat, and take a bus from there to Lima (24h). There are boats almost every day it seems, although not before Christmas is over, i.e. Saturday. This way we would postpone the Ecuador trip and travel first in Peru and Bolivia.

Finally, we could win some time and (maybe) save some money by flying directly from Iquitos to Lima. Flights with Peruvian Airlines are surprisingly cheap, 95 USD one way, and go out every day.

What would you, our dear reader, choose: option 1, 2, or 3?