Part 2 of Peru. This time the North, where my entry point was Trujillo, a city on the Pacific coast that is famous for its delicious fish and seafood. I spent 11 days in Trujillo & Huanchaco (a surfers' paradise with the longest waves in the world close by). My plan was to leave after 3 days but I got some pretty nasty tooth pain which ended up in a 6 hour root canal treatment (3 appointments x 2 hours) and a lot of pain for around 2 weeks. Thanks to Pamela, her mother and Gabi I had a place to stay and a family that cared so well about me. Thank you so much for that!
My plan was to finally do some longer hikes again in the Central Sierra of Peru around Huaraz since my knee injury from Bolivia finally healed well but then I could not due to my tooth pain & treatment. I hope one day I will be able to have multiple-day hikes again :D
I skipped the Central Sierra then and moved on to Lima directly, where I decided to base myself in 3 different districts to see several faces of the gigantic city. First I stayed for 2 nights in Surco, where I cycled with Machi and her friends around the closed streets on a Sunday and enjoyed some Carnaval parades. My second stop was in Miraflores, Lima's upscale neighborhood full of restaurants, Starbucks, nightlife, gringos and wealthy people. It has a really high quality of life but honestly was not very interesting to me. The same area could have been in Tel Aviv, Los Angeles or Barcelona and you would not even notice. I stayed with Roland in his beautiful apartment and had a lovely time with him!
The most interesting part of Lima or next to Lima was for sure the part everyone warned me not to set foot in: Callao! The city is home to Peru's biggest port and comes with a lot of problems: Poverty, high crime rates and drug trafficking. I stayed there for 4 days and met sooo many warm & nice people there. I ate at several mercados, went to the beach, visited La Punta and played football with some kiddos. Yes especially in the night it felt very sketchy and I never had any valuables with me but in general, it was the most interesting part of Lima for me. It also proved to me again that yes, you should be careful but don't listen to local people's advice too much. Most of them have never been in those areas, just listen to news & horror stories and mindlessly pass that useless information to other people. On the other hand, most places that locals recommend to me were boring as hell and super touristy :D
For my next step in Peru, I had to take a flight to the city of Iquitos, the biggest city in the world only accessible by flight and boat. Iquitos is one of the craziest and most interesting places I have ever been to. The Amazon River starts in that area, it's the capital of ayahuasca, it has the poorest education level in Peru and it has the craziest market I have ever seen in my life (and yes I have seen many many crazy markets). Most travelers who come to Iquitos use it as a base to explore the Amazon rain forest, do Ayahuasca or run away from their lives into complete isolation. From Iquitos, you can't take boats to Colombia, Brazil and other parts of Peru too. That mix of positively crazy people, super ugly & dirty streets & buildings, the very humid climate, extremely high corruption, exotic & crazy food and beautiful nature around made it one of the most interesting places in entire South America for me. I think if I could only visit one place in Peru, it would be Iquitos and its surroundings.
After a few days in the city, I went on a 3 day Amazon rainforest adventure with Vivien & Silvana from Switzerland and Yevhen from Ukraine. We based ourselves in a family homestay in the jungle, just next to one of the Amazon river arms. The tour included several hikes into the jungle, animal spotting, learning about local life, boat trips and fishing. It has been an amazing experience and seeing sloths, eagles, piranhas, river dolphins and colorful frogs in their natural habitat was beautiful.
After the jungle tour, I spent a day with Yevhen exploring Belén, Iquitos poorest district with the craziest market I have seen in my life. Belén is home to more than 60,000 people within a pretty small area and without any sanitation. Most of the area is under water all year round and that's why most houses are built as floating buildings. There is literally everything to buy you can ever think of, over 150 native communities from upriver come down to the market to sell their products. My photos under this post will show you a few examples, of what those products are. Unfortunately, many of them are manufactured from endangered species, like caiman teeth, jaguar skulls or claws of anteaters. That's also the reason why we did not eat Piache there, a massive 180 kg fish from the Amazon.
The real Amazon adventure started after Iquitos though. I took a 4-night cargo ship from Iquitos to Yurimaguas! I just had to appear on the day of departure, bring a hammock to sleep in, pay 100 Soles (24 Euros) and the legendary 5-day long journey started. I have been the only foreigner on the boat and this was the perfect way to experience the Amazon region slowly and deeply. There were plenty of stops every day to load and unload goods at several villages in the jungle. It has been so interesting to see how people live in this remote part of the world. There were 3 (awful) meals a day included which pretty much tasted like how I imagine jail food. The cargo ship had three levels, the upper two for passengers in their hammocks and the lowest one for goods, cows and chicken. There was a small pipe to shower with water from the river and the daily sunset was the clear highlight of the day. My 5 main activities were animal spotting ( I spotted dolphins, caimans and plenty of beautiful birds), reading 2 entire books (a very good Uruguayan and a bad Chilean), writing journal, napping in the hammock and philosophizing about life. My mood pretty much looked like that:
Day 1: Super excited, taking photos of everything & nearly did not sleep at all
Day 2: Started to get used to the slow-paced days, talking with locals on the ship and starting to hate the food
Day 3: First sights of boredom, sleeping much more and wandering around the ship
Day 4: Please just let me out of here, I need real food and a shower, started to read books I have read before and built a construction out of water bottles to pee directly in the river instead of using the now worst toilet I have seen in my life
Day 5: Arrival in Yurimaguas at 5 am and run off the ferry to celebrate civilization & real food
Those days on the cargo ship were one of my very very best travel experiences I had in the last 5 years and an amazing way to experience the jungle, the isolation & nature with all its beautiful pros and cons.
I had another week in Peru then, which I spent in Yurimaguas (just doing nothing & eating a lot), Tarapoto (hanging out with Kardo, visiting waterfalls & working) and Piura (staying with Giancarlo on his amazing farm in a desert & enjoying the company of animals, Giancarlo & Marco and local products there).
The North of Peru was just an amazing time with so many diverse places to explore, taste and see. My 10 weeks in Peru passed by rapidly fast and I felt that I would need a break from traveling soon. I will miss Peru's landscapes, many people (especially Andrea, Kardo, Giancarlo, Pamela and Roland, I will miss you guys!) and the cuisine which has been by far the best in South America so far!
5 Highlights:
- 5-day cargo ship trip from Iqutios in the Amazon region
- Exploring the very different faces of Peru's capital Lima
- Iquitos with Belén and a tour of the Amazon rainforest
- Staying on a farm around desert-like landscapes in Piura
- Tarapota, the tropical city of palms and waterfalls
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| Visited places in Peru (framed in this post) |
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| The diversity of Peru in one graphic |
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| Plaza de Armas, Trujillo |
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| With Pamela and her Mamá in Trujillo |
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| A Venezuelan burger stall in Trujillo |
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| Canal root treatment part 3 |
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| Punta Hostel in Huanchaco |
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| Rocky beaches in Huanchaco during sunset |
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| Pisco festival in Surco, Lima |
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| Cycling around the traffic closed streets in Lima |
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| Carnaval in Lima |
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| A very old traditional Italien restaurant in Cental Lima |
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| Miraflores, Lima |
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| From Roland's roof top pool |
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| Live music in Miraflores |
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| With Roland |
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| That's Miraflores |
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| View from my window in La Perla, Callao |
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| The gigantic port in the background |
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| A huge fire in Callao with a building collapsing at the end |
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| The police station opposite my room, where they arrested someone every 10 minutes |
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| Beach in La Punta |
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| Having a walk around La Punta with Chen |
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| Thousands of migrating birds at the coast |
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| People in the barrio party until 10 am |
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| Arriving in tropical Iquitos |
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| Arriving in our jungle camp |
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| My hut for the next 3 days |
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| Peru, country of birds |
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| Papayas! |
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| The first sloth! |
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| Cocoa |
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| Trying to catch Piranhas |
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| Swimming in the Amazon after spotting Piranhas & river dolphins in the same spot |
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| Nova! |
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| After 3 days |
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| A small Piranha |
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| Highways of the Amazon rainforest |
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| Following Luis Advincula |
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| A dead Boa Constrictor |
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| Night walk in the jungle |
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| The colorful busses of Iquitos |
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| The neighborhood of Belen |
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| Belen market, one of the most interesting markets I have ever seen |
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| Would you try? |
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| A walk around the floating houses of Belen |
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| At one point the only way to continue was by boat |
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| Street scenes in Belen |
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| My dinner in Iquitos: Chicken feet, a Piranha and cow insides |
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| Couchsurfing meeting in Iquitos, back in civilization after some days in the jungle |
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| Starting my 4-day Amazon cargo ship adventure |
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| My hammock spot for the next 4 days on the second level of the ship |
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| Departing! |
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| That's how he used his dad's drug empire money |
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| The cabins for the boat crew on the ship |
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| First sunset, the highlight of every day |
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| First floor of the ship, most passengers preferred to hang their hammocks next to the toilets and kitchen |
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| One of the many village stops |
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| Water tank from where I had my daily showers |
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| Thats the water they used to cook food and make tea and coffee |
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| A village with a school at Amazon river |
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| Meal time! |
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| Hm, tempting? |
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| Banana stop at 6 am in the morning |
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| The river got more and more narrow with every hour |
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| In the end, we ended up with hundreds of chickens.. |
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| .. and plenty of cows |
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| Some of the glorious meals on the ship |
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| Protecting myself of Mosquitos which came in hundreds after sunset |
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| My first meal after the ship, it was one of the best of my life |
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| Tarapoto! |
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| With crazy Kardo |
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| Hiking our way through a jungle towards a waterfall |
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| Kardo trying to climb up the waterfall |
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| Kardo's Pokemon collection :D |
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| Supervising the hostel Kardo works at and having beers, best fun |
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| Food in Peru, I will miss it |
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| The farm I stayed at 15 km from Piura |
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| The chicken who belives he is a dog |
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| My last day in Peru, off to new adventures! |
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| The only acceptable way to say goodbye to Peru. Ceviche, corn, Chifle and Inca Kola |
