Iquitos

I was in Iquitos last week.
Which you probably know, if you're reading this. But if you don't, then hi! You must be new.
I needed about ten minutes in Iquitos to figure out I liked it a lot more than Manaus. The thing I noticed that fast was that there are no cars in Iquitos.
Well, there are very, very few cars in Iquitos. Only a handful. There are, however, a lot of motokars. In case you don't know what a motokar is, here's a picture with a bunch of them (in general, this post will be just a lot of pictures):

So basically they're just from half motorcycle (or possibly moped? I'm not actually familiar with the vocabulary describing things with two wheels and a motor), back half a seat that can apparently fit up to six people if three of them are small kids.
What I liked about the city being dominated by them and not by cars is that they take up way less space than a car, so the roads can be smaller, and that they're slower than cars, which made it a lot nicer to walk among them. And if you didn't want to walk, it generally costs only a few soles to get around the city with a mototaxi. Because that's what most of those motokars are. They're taxis. So most people don't even need to own one of these. They just take the mototaxi when they need to go anywhere.
I did learn quite fast, though, that they, too, have their downsides. Like the fact that they're noisier than cars. And since it's an open carriage, you hear all that noise all the time. And that unless you're driving on a very good road, you will get dust into your eyes and mouth.
But still. It was a nice change from the traffic jams of Manaus.

Anyway. I was in Iquitos for five full days. On the first one I caught a stomach bug that dad diagnosed as cholera after I had complained to him about it for three days. So that was not great. However, it only kept me laying down in bed fighting nausea for one day, so I did have some time to do other things as well.
So what did I do?
Well, I just walked around the city. Because that's what you do in a new city.

I went actually a couple of times to the Belen street market, which I didn't like very much, and of which this is definitely not a great picture. But it's the only one I have, because it was not the kind of place I felt comfortable walking around with my camera out, even if Iquitos is generally a safe city.
There are a lot of people in a small space, a lot of vendors selling everything from fruits to some kind of cigars, and the area is huge. Or maybe it was only a few blocks, I don't know, it felt huge to me, because the crowd went on a little too long if you ask me. There was also the muddy ground and smoke in the air (in some places, at least) because people were selling meals with grilled fish and chicken. There were also people selling raw chicken, the meat just spread on the table, yes, without even any packaging, which I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced is very hygienic in that heat (or anywhere else), even if you do have a fly swatter to shoo away the flies when they sit on your chicken.
So yeah. Not a huge fan. But other people at the hostel I was staying at seemed to be. And I do still think it's worth it to go see it, if you ever happen to be in Iquitos.

I also walked around in the actual center, the Belen market was a little off to the side.

 Here's Plaza de Armas, the main square of Iquitos.

And some wall-paintings.

And an old boat, stranded on land.

One day, I was half-lost making my way back from the Belen market, and I stumbled upon this other square, too. It somehow spoke to me, and I ended up sitting there for quite a while, on the bench you can see on the left there, just watching the kids there chase pigeons. One time one of the little boys somehow managed to scare all the pigeons into flight at once, and he looked so happy, just laughing an running among the flying birds. One of the even smaller girls smiled widely too, watching the birds fly around, safely from behind her dad's leg.

There was also this old, old locomotive in the square, and some statued of people looking fancy. I later learned that there had been a total of four trains in Iquitos, but now there were none, so maybe this is from one of those. I'm not sure where from where and to where the trains went, because it was explained to me in Spanish so I didn't understand much, so I suppose that will remain a mystery.

Also by the square there was Radio La Kalle, which I just found amusing. I have no idea if Kalle means something in Spanish, though, but it is a common Finnish name.

There aren't many museums in Iquitos, but I managed to go to two. One about native people of the area, and one about the history of Iquitos (which is where I learned about the trains).
First the indigenous museum.

They had some miniheads with lipstrings.

And some skulls of monkeys and I think that one in the bottom row is a jaguar, and some sort of deer-like creatures are maybe the ones with the horns? I don't actually know. I just took a picture because skulls are cool.

 And then they had this guy, who was not at all creepy.

 And a picture of a unicorn bird. Also other animals. But a unicorn bird.

And then there were a big bunch of ceremonial headdresses and ankle and wrist thingies. This is just one example. I haven't figured out how this is used, though. Some of them were a lot smaller, and they looked like they're simply tied at the back of the neck and then it'll stay on your head with the feathers up, but is way, way too big to be tied around someone's head. So I don't know.

And then there were some... vases? These aren't vases. What are these? In any language? Anyway, I swear someone I know has one that looks an awful lot like the one on the right, and if it's not our parents then is some close relative of ours, and I'm a little confused, because those can't be easy to take from Peru to Finland. A ceramic mug or plate is still ok, but that's a lot bigger than a mug.

Ok. This was obviously not everything they had at the museum, but a bit of it. Now to the Iquitos history museum. I didn't understand very much there, because there was this over-eager doorman who wanted to show me around, and he explained everything in Spanish, so yeah. Also the texts were all in Spanish (in the native people museum had everything in English too, which was nice), which wouldn't have been an enormous problem, if I had given enough time. I speak enough Portuguese now to understand the main bits of written Spanish. But the doorman kept wanting to show me the next thing, so I never had the time to read the texts. I think he may have been bored. There was no one else in the museum when I got there.
Anyway.

 There was this statue of a native boy.

And these drums that were used to communicate over long distances.

And this thing, that I think looks like the whole Jesus born in a stable thing that's all over the place close to Christmas, except it also looks like there's some native people there, so that doesn't make any sense

 And a map of how Iquitos has expanded in the last hundred years.

And a Jesus.

And then there were a couple of chest-and-head statues (that probably has an actual name) of some dudes that I think had something to do with some revolutions they had in Iquitos, I'm not sure. And either way, the statues were boring-looking. So I'm moving on.

What I did manage to do aside from a couple of museums was a couple of animal rescue centers. There were a couple more of those around Iquitos, I think, but I only made it to two. Basically they take in animals that are found being kept as pets or in a market being sold illegally or just found motherless in the wild. They try to get them better and then release back to the wild, but for example ex-pets have often been around humans their whole life and wouldn't know how to be out there, so they're given a safe home instead.
One of those places was also a butterfly farm, where they make sure that the eggs laid actually make it to adulthood. And then they release half of those butterflies, and keep the other half to produce the next generation of eggs. Because apparently not that many of the eggs of butterflies make it to adulthood in the wild, and quite a lot of them to make it to adulthood there.
So here's some pictures of animals.

 Some butterflies, obviously.

 And some caterpillars.

 And then here's the challenge: find the caterpillars.

 And some marmosets drinking milk.

 And a toucan.

 And a jaguar.

And a tapir that I swear was about as big as the jaguar. Also my camera apparently hated it, because I have various pictures and all of them have the focus on the metal web instead of the tapir.

And some parrots, finally some parrots! I've been in the rain forest for months, and this was the first time I've seen parrots properly.

And some bigger monkeys. For the record, in these two fotos, we are the ones in the cage. The monkeys and parrots are the ones outside the cage.

I also saw some ocelots.

And otters. There are apparently two species of otters in the Amazon. One is huge, and one is small. This is the smaller one.

And some sloths.

And baby-manatees. I didn't even know they had manatees in the Amazon until I got to Manaus. But they do.

So that was my few days in Iquitos.
I flew to Lima yesterday morning. What I will say now is that I was sure I would freeze the moment I stepped off the plane, because I've been in the tropical, warm, lowland rain forest for months, on top of always being cold in general. But no. It wasn't nearly as cold as I feared. I put on some long pants and some long sleeves and was fine. Until the sun set. That'e when I froze.
But the beds have thick blankets, so maybe that'll be enough. I don't know, because it's actually still yesterday evening as I'm writing this. I hope it will be enough. Ive missed thick blankets.

I'll tell you more about Lima next week.

~matu