I arrived here in Iquitos last night. I wanted to come by land, but it would have been a 24-hour bus ride followed by four days of boating down the amazon... had i a lot more time this option could have been fun, but then again it could have just been hell. I may like adventure, but I´m no Henry Morton Stanley. besides, i already have lots of bussing ahead what with the trip back to santiago. Lan had a promotion on a round-trip ticket here and i found a place to stay for $6 a night, so i cleared out.
Iquitos, despite being a pretty big city, is not connected by highway to the rest of south america. It is isolated by jungle and rivers, so the only way to get here is by boat or plane. It is basically an island, surrounded by huge rivers, including the amazon. There are hardly any cars here, seeing as they are hard to bring in. the transportation consists of motorcycles and motorcyles convirted into three-wheeled sketchy taxis. Everything is super cheap. yesterday I had a quarter roast chicken, mountain of rice, fried plantains, salad, and this weird purple corn drink that they make all for under $3. They make all sorts of different hot sauces here, most of which are super good.
Edith's maid's niece, Ceci, who comes over most days, was born in Iquitos and most all her family is here. She gave me their address and some photos of her graduation to give to them. This morning I took the photo album, got in/on a moto taxi and told him the address. We ended up going well outside the center of the city and towards the river banks where the buildings are wooden with thatched roofs and constructed on stilts for the flood season. close to there, in a little funky brick house with a dirt floor, I found Ceci's sister-in law and her son of 4 months. Everyone else was out. She took me to see Ceci's mom, who sells fish. They were very happy to meet me and recieve the photos, and invited me to come over later. When I came back there was lots of family- more than I could imagine all living in that little house. Her borther has a motorcycle and gave me a tour of the area. We were eating some barbecued cow hearts by the docks and met one of his friends who has a boat and offered to take me, for a small price, on a river trip to see some wildlife, including this type of pink river dolfin that everyone here talks about (there's even a statue of one in the city). The whole family made me very welcome and invited to me come back. I'll take some pictures for Ceci, seeing as she barely ever gets to come visit, and hasn't even met her little nefew.
The place I'm staying is all anglophones with nylon zip-off pants, bandanas and tank-tops. I must have been absent the day when all of the backpackers recieved their uniforms. Pretty much everyone I talked to there has tried or is planning to try this hallucinogenic herb that grows here. I'm sorry, but if some guy calling himself a shaman is selling drugs to whatever foreign stranger desperate for an authentic jungle experience, he's no shaman... he's just a native dude looking to make a buck. This one girl from ashland said that, while her borther 'kind of saw something,' the only effect she reaped was waking up in the middle of the night and, in a hurry to get out of her tent and vomit, tripped and got a gnarly black eye. I think the jungle is far-out enough without the help of mind and stomach-altering herbs, thanks anyway.