Michael: Hello! This is the city of Iquitos. Rosina and I were together and explained the history of Iquitos. While walking, we entered a museum and "bumped into" a man named George. He gave us a tour. We were surprised to also bump into the mayor of Iquitos! Jorge said he would give us a tour of a nearby town, Belen on a boat. This is a floating city. He said he would meet us at two 'o clock. It is a FASCINATING town! Most of the homes are floating in the river!! Others are more set. People who live there have left. Why? The water rose 8 meters! That equals to 26 feet because it is the wet season. There's still more rain and the water is still rising. People living in homes that don't float had to evacuate. What do the people of the floating city's lives look like? When they go to the bathroom, it's set outside. There's no pipes or plumbing! They bathe in the river, swim and all that. We were fascinated and rode the boat then got on a hill (land) and went to the Belen market. There was a lot of food. In one specific area, you can't eat that food or you will become sick. George led us to the other side of the market where there's good food that you can eat. There's a fruit called Juanes You see that? (pointing to food). The food is in the banana leaf. What's inside? Rice, olives, eggs, and other things. (See http://perufood.blogspot.com/2006/09/photo-juanes-quintessential-amazonian.html). Also, we bought nuts and oranges. You know how our oranges are orange, right? Here, they are green! They're still delicious. We walked and ate and relaxed at our hotel. Tomorrow we will leave to the Amazon Rain Forest with Manti people. We will be gone for four days and three nights. We'll see what happens!
Note from Gary: Got in Iquitos yesterday after three hours of delay. We think it was the typical tropical thunderstorm that held us in Lima.
The kids were in awe with what they saw when we got on the main road. The traffic mostly consists of motocarros (motorcycle with a two passenger buggy-looks a bit like a tricycle). The Amazon river is a block away from us. We saw the river last night and it looks huge but will see everything better in the daytime. We are eating breakfast and there are two cute small green parrots that behave like dogs begging for food. They even climbed on our hands.
Tomorrow morning we will depart for the rainforest and may have NO access to Internet. We will return Lima late Monday night so do not expect any news from us until the 9th.
The floating town of Belen.
A cool group picture of us. We had time to get it framed! :)
The Belen Market.
Fishes from the Amazon sold at the Belen Market.
The floating town of Belen.
