RIO AMAZONAS AND IQUITOS – Adventure travel
Enjoy the best in overseas adventure travel in the Amazonas. The river Amazon, the largest in the world, has always been a place of pilgrimage for different types of explorers: Whether seeking long lost treasure such as that in the legend of El Dorado, or the more recent "black gold", rubber, production of which in the 19th Century produced rapid economic progress for Iquitos. Some Art Nouveau houses remain as relics of the rubber boom - a style of architecture that is very rare in Amazon cities - the best known of which is the "Iron House" designed by Gustave Eiffel.
But the Amazon also attracts another type of explorer: biologists and forestry engineers studying the great arboreal and biological diversity found in the forest, anthropologists seeking a little more knowledge of the ethnic groups that live along the river Amazon and travellers wanting to see something of the mysteries of this great river - and why not? Take a dip and share the river with the pink dolphins that are found in it.
Iquitos is the largest Peruvian city on the banks of the river Amazon and as such has developed its own very distinctive characteristics; it is the starting point for trips to a number of jungle lodges and visits to indigenous populations such as the Bora or Yagua
Essentials
Pacaya Samiria National Reserve: 183 km from the city of Iquitos (4 hours in fast launch). Pacaya Samiria, with its two million hectares of lakes, lagoons, swamps and wetlands. This is the territory of the manati or sea cow, the pink dolphin, the charapa turtle and the anaconda. It is the largest area of floodable forest in the Amazon region.
The Iron House: It was built in 1887 and designed by the famous French architect Gustave Eiffel. It was brought dismantled from Paris in a Brazilian ship, its final destination was to be the river Mishagua in the department of Madre de Dios. Because of transport problems, the cargo was sold to Spanish rubber trader Anselmo del Aguila who had it erected where it now stands, as a testimony to the rubber boom in Iquitos.
