Iquitos, Peru. What an interesting, impossible place. A jungle city that shouldn’t exist, sitting on the edge of the Amazon River near the Colombia–Peru border, reachable only by plane or boat. Founded in the 19th century during the rubber boom, Iquitos once pulled in European barons and fortune-chasers who built opera houses in the middle of the rainforest and imagined they could bend the Amazon to their will. The rainforest won, of course, but the city stayed. Today it’s a humid, chaotic hub for the countless villages strung along the river, a staging point for adventures that blur the line between story and memory.
I flew in a day before my travel partner to get my bearings and secure a guide for our five-day trip down the Amazon. The second I stepped outside the airport, I was swallowed by a swarm of tuk-tuks. I grabbed one at random and rattled across town toward my hostel, the Flying Dog. It was still early, so after dropping my bags and getting the usual warnings. Don’t wear your backpack on the streets, keep your phone close. I headed into the city in search of food and a trustworthy guide.
I ended up at a small restaurant near the main square, where the owner took one look at me, smiled, and said he knew just the person. Within the hour I was on the back of a motorcycle headed toward a cluster of houses along the river, meeting a family, a guide, and negotiating the next several days of my life. Three hundred dollars later, I was drifting down the Amazon in a long, narrow canoe with a motor and a straw roof, accompanied by two guides, Ori and Jean Paul, and our driver, Aaron , though everyone called him Bartalito.
Jean Paul spoke solid English. Ori did not, but what he lacked in words he made up for with the quiet, commanding presence of someone who’d spent years in the Peruvian special forces. As we motored downstream, the two of them told us legends of the river, stories of jaguar hunts, and encounters with pythons thick as your thigh.
Our first day’s adventure took us off the boat and down what the guides called the “jungle highway,” a paved footpath linking several villages. Along the walk, Jean Paul pointed out fruits and plants, explaining their uses. The white fruit he handed us was the sweetest I’ve ever tasted. At one point, a local puppy trotted over from someone’s yard to say hello, then decided to follow us. After an hour of walking with this dog still at our heels, we stopped for beers in a small village. That’s when Jean Paul told us matter-of-factly that the dog was now ours, that we would keep him for the journey, and that his name was Lobo. “Dogs are important in the jungle,” he said. “They warn you before something tries to kill you.” I didn’t argue.
That night we made camp at the home of Jaime, a local shaman. We slept on his porch, ate dinner with his family, and helped cook breakfast the next morning before heading back onto the river. Jaime joined us for the next leg, guiding us toward a remote lagoon he used for fishing.
By the time we reached it two days later, the sun was low and the air heavy. Before bed, we spent nearly an hour chest-deep in the water helping Jaime set his nets. I kept feeling small nibbles against my torso, assuming it was nothing until Jean Paul casually mentioned it was piranhas tasting us. The next morning we hauled in the nets, about 120 fish for Jaime. Some were intact. Others were only skeletons, stripped clean overnight by the same piranhas we’d shared the water with.
The following day we turned back toward Iquitos. For our last night on the river, we stopped at Jaime’s home again, but this time our guides insisted we sleep in the jungle. How could I say no? We walked half a kilometer from the riverbank, where Ori and Jean Paul helped us cut down trees to build shelters from scratch. The night was long, wet, loud, and alive. Every rustle in the dark could have been a bird, a monkey, or something with teeth. It was terrifying and incredible. Part of me hopes jaguars were close. Part of me hopes they weren’t. The next morning we said goodbye to Jaime, left Lobo in his care, and made the journey back to Iquitos.
Now, the food. Amazonian cuisine is not for the weak of stomach. Cooking over fire is a luxury on boats, so most of our travel meals were hard-boiled eggs wrapped in rice and banana leaves. Edible, but less charming after three days in the heat. Dinners were usually the fish we caught: roasted on sticks or boiled in pots. The flavor was wonderful, piranha included, but the meat was scarce, and the bones were many. The unexpected star of the trip was the deep-fried bread we mixed, cooked, and dusted with sugar each morning. Simple, hot, sweet, perfect.
Iquitos and the Amazon aren’t glamorous. They’re raw, unpredictable, humbling. But if you want an adventure that stays with you long after the trip is over, this is the place. It gets under your skin in the best possible way.