Discovering Iquitos and the selva

Mid-February it was time to take a plane again and head to Iquitos, north of Peru. This time it was for with AlternativePeru since we wanted to check out a few places around Iquitos for our new tour.

This was my second trip to Iquitos and selva, since I had been there in September last year. I was really excited to see the area again, since last time it was dry season and now rainy season, so I wanted to see the difference.

Iquitos is the world's largest city where you cannot get to by road, only by air or by river. The flight from Lima takes only about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Most of the tourists visit Iquitos only on their way to Amazonian lodges, but there are some interesting places to visit in Iquitos as well e.g. Belén, where we visited as well.

First thing you notice when you get to Iquitos, already at the airport, are mototaxis. They are everywhere and they are loud! Mototaxi from the airport to the center takes about 30 minutes.

Our flight arrived really early in the morning, so we asked our mototaxi driver to find us a place for breakfast. He did and we had a good breakfast somewhere near mercado and Plaza de Armas. Their juices where really delicious, although the coffee was instant, but did the trick.

Then it was time for us to start our trip to the first destination of our short Iquitos trip. We met our guide in Belén (area in Iquitos, which I will tell more later). After getting a taxi with our guide and a local girl Erika, who was going back home to the village we were going as well after spending some time in the city, we drove towards Nauta for less than one hour. We then continued the trip by foot in rubber boots, of course, because of the rainy season. The walk to our lodge was really pleasant. Our guide stopped ones in a while to explain us different things about the trees or other vegetation and animals that can be found in the area.

Road towards the lodge and our guide

After about 1,5 hours we arrived to this little oasis in the community of Nueva Esperanza, where you can only get by foot. Houses are here are quite widespread in the area so they are close but not too close so there is enough space and you do feel like you are in the middle of the jungle, which is a great thing :)!

In the jungle

The lodge, where we stayed, is built of woods that were found in the area so no trees where cut down for the lodge. Our guide has spent all his life in the area so he knows a lot about everything! After the walk we rested for a bit and checked out the lodge and a really cool toilet.

View from the toilet :)

Then our guide took us around the jungle and the community for 2 hours walk. The jungle around the community is untouched so it is really relaxing to walk there and listen to all sorts of sounds: birds, apes and other animals and the trees humming. We ended our tour in the community where we could see the school house, now empty because of the summer holidays, and also where locals live.

Local school

This area of the jungle is nice because there are a lot less mosquitoes than in some other areas. This is most likely because there is not that much still water around. Of course there still are mosquitoes but not like in the place I last visited in September.

It was then time to get ready for the dinner. Since there is no electricity at the lodge everything needs to be done before the sun sets or in the candle light. We had our own chef who lives at the lodge to prepare us a really delicious dinner.

Kitchen and eating area

We had a pretty long day, leaving Lima before sun rise, so we were all ready to hit the bed. Beds are in an open room, of course with mosquito nets, but you can here the jungle around you. Really, really lovely!

I usually don't sleep that long and all my friends know me as a person who gets up at 5 in the morning, so I was a bit worried that going to bed around 7-8 in the evening, I would wake up really early. I did wake up once to listen to the rain falling at night, but fell back to sleep immediately and waking up for our guide calling me at 7.30!!! So if you have some problems to sleep enough, I can warmly suggest this place to cure your sleep deprivation!

Since we were only travelling for a long weekend, we didn't do a complete tour at the lodge but headed back to Iquitos next morning after breakfast. We again walked to the main road for about 1,5 hours. On the way we saw some really cute monkeys, butterflies and of course locals walking the from the main street to the village.

We took a local bus back to the city and it took us about an hour to Iquitos. Rest of the day we took it easy, walked a little bit in the center of Iquitos and by the river.

Next morning we did a tour in Belén, the area of Iquitos I mentioned earlier. I was really interested to see how it looked liked in the rainy season after seeing it when it was dry. Belén is sometimes called Venice of Iquitos because of the water everywhere in rainy season, like in Venice. This shantytown is an area where the poor people live, not like in Italy. Most of them don't have proper sewer so the toilet is a shack next to the house. Most of the houses do have electricity and you can see lots of satellite antennas around.

Some houses are built on high legs and if the water gets higher than where the floor is, people need to move somewhere else until the water falls again. Other houses are so called flouting houses. They are not attached to the ground with feet, but they float with water. So when water gets high, the house rises; when the water gets low, the house falls to the ground.

In the dry season there is a river running through Belén but it is really narrow compared to the lake it looks like the rainy season.

Belén September 2014 (left), Belén February 2015 (right)

Now the water wasn't yet reached its peak but you can really see the difference. Hopefully it won't rise too much since lots of people will be in trouble if it does.

Belén also has a huge market area where they sell everything from chicken and turtle meat to vegetables, all kinds of potions you can make of ingredients found in the jungle, hand made pure tobacco or mixture with coca leaves and so on and so on.

Tobacco sale stand in Belén

The same afternoon we had a chance to visit a place called La Chacra. Amazing organic farm in the middle of the jungle and again you get there quite quickly from Iquitos. With mototaxi about half an hour and a bit less than an hour with local bus. We met with Eloisa, absolutely amazing Peruvian woman who showed us around in the grounds, we ate some mandarins from the trees and enjoyed a wonderful local fish dish for lunch. La Chacra is not only an organic farm, but the owners are actively participating with local community with educational projects to youth as an example.
After truly inspiring afternoon at La Chacra it was time for us to head back to Iquitos and get ready for the next morning and early flight back to Lima.

La Chacra

All in all, we spent 3 excellent days in Iquitos and around. We had an opportunity to meet wonderful Peruvians and see amazing sites and I am sure we can put together a really good tour! So follow our website or like us in Facebook. If you have some questions or comments, drop me a line to soile.puranen@alternativeperu.org

Trip of a life time: Peru, Bolivia and Chile in 3 weeks!

My 3 weeks of traveling with my dear "little sister" Livia from Paris, France was ready to start on mid-January when Livia arrived to Lima. The planning had started long, long before  since we wanted to see and do lots and only had 3 weeks! Good planning served us well, since the trip in total was a success and we saw so many cool places. At the same time we also realised that there are so many cool places we didn't have time to see so hopefully more traveling in South America!

So our travel started with obvious choice in Peru, that is Cusco and Machu Picchu. For me only Cusco since I had already been to Machu Picchu last October. Livia spent amazing 2 days visiting surroundings of Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu, while I tried to get use to the altitude and enjoyed really sunny days in Cusco. So don't believe what people say that it always rains there in January! We did have some heavy thunderstorms but luckily only at night.

Our traveling continued with a flight to La Paz, Bolivia. In La Paz we stayed quite near the Witches markets. Of course we had to check them out and get some souvenirs.

Next morning we continued to 2 days to Lake Titicaca and Copacabana. It is amazingly beautiful there! Our day was full with a trip to Isla del Sol and a small hike there. We came back to Cobacabana just in time to enjoy a local beer and watch the sun set.

Lake Titicaca - Isla del Sol, Bolivia

Next morning we continued exploring Copacabana with a day tour. We had enough time to visit the floating islands of Bolivia, but unfortunately the boat drivers wanted full boats and there were not enough tourists around. Anyway I've heard that they are much nicer when visited from Peru side, so just need to add that to my list of "things to visit in Peru" :).

Travel from Copacabana back to La Paz takes all together about 4 hours: first about an hour to the ferry, off from the bus and to a small boat (they have separate boats for people and cars), then another 2,5 hours to La Paz. That evening we tried a pizza place really close to our hotel (recommended by Lonely Planet) since we were too tired and lazy to find anything else and actually it was really nice! Also managed to see my friend Dan, whom I met in Quito at New Year!

The next morning we wanted to see Plaza de Armas and explore the center, which actually turned out to be impossible. Some sort of get-together with South American presidents were suppose to happen that day so the whole area was closed. But we think we saw a president (or must have been someone really important) from Brazil :)!!

Then it was time to move on and our next flight took us to Uyuni, Bolivia, which is a very busy town as you can see from the picture below (not!!!).

Very busy "city" of Uyuni, Bolivia

The picture is lousy,
but so was the "croque monsieur"!!

Our hotel was a perfect little oasis! In Uyuni it was a little bit difficult to find a place where to eat. Well, there were pizzerias everywhere but this night we wanted something different. The hotel suggested Le Loco so we decided to wait while it opened. We finally got there and since it was owned by French, I though I'd try their croque monsieur which I love in Paris. Well, I must admit, it had nothing to do with croque monsieur and it was the worst of a kind I'd ever eaten!! But the wine and french fries were good :).

Since there was really nothing else to do in town, our hotel had a collection of DVD's so we watched one and had a really good night sleep before heading to Salar de Uyuni next day!


Our pickup was on time (yey!!) and our guide was nice Peruvian guy. Our tour was 3 days and 2 nights from Uyuni through Salar de Uyuni, Boliviia and ending to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. Almost all tours are similar but so many reviews have comments about drunk drivers so we were a bit cautious. But our tour and guide/driver was perfect! He only spoke Spanish, but we understood each other perfectly (at least so we think!).

First night we stayed in a really cool salt hotel and the second one up at 4600 meters! I admit that  I had quite a bad headache because on the second hotel because of altitude but they had oxygen available, which helped!

As you can see from the pics, it was pretty amazing!

Salt lakes, lagunas with flamingos and llamas,
aaah so pretty!

And of course the goofy pictures :D!

This trip ended to Chilean city of San Pedro de Atacama, where we changed from cold to warm. Until San Pedro lots of warm clothes were needed but now all these could be packed away and we could enjoy the summer again :)!

San Pedro de Atacama is super cute little city. It is quite touristic but still really nice and friendly. From there we did 2 trips, first one to Moon Valley and second one to Tatio geysers. Ok, I was wrong. We couldn't pack our warm clothes just yes, since we left to Tatio geysers really early in the morning and when arriving to our first stop it was rrrrrrrrreally cold, but oh so beautiful! And we did take a dip in the hot laguna :)

Valle de la Luna, Chile

Tatio Geysirs, Chile

Next 2 days we spent in Santiago. I liked Santiago a lot, perhaps it was because we did a super nice free walking tour around the city with Franco (who knows everything from student life to history!) or maybe it was because of that yammy lucuma-chocolate ice cream I had or maybe it was the wine tour - Viña del Mar - Valparaiso tour we did or Pablo Neruda's interesting houses and stories or maybe it was just all that above. Definitely I want to come back to Santiago one day!

Santiago, Chile

Then the highlight for our tour, at least it was for Livia :), Rapa Nui, i.e. Easter Islands! We had the biggest surprise when we checked into our flight, we were in business class, yippeee :)! Not sure if it was a mistake, but we didn't care and enjoyed our 5 hour flight! Arrived to hot and humid (almost like Lima) Hanga Roa, that is the capital of Easter Island. We had almost 4 days to enjoy the island. Of course we wanted to see all the Moai's and everything this amazing island had to offer us. I think I will let the pictures speak the thousand words....

Easter Island, Chile

After arriving to Lima from Easter Island through Santiago we still had almost 2 full days in Lima. First day just strolling around Barranco and Lima Centro. Livia's last day in Lima was spent visiting worlds 2nd largest cemetery in Lima "Nueva Esperanza" and also pueblos jovenes in Manchay.

Lima: Barranco, Nueva Esperanza, Manchay

Gracias, mi amiga Livia <3, for this amazing trip!

Where did the year 2014 go???? Well, I lost mine in Quito, Ecuador J. Anyway it is now gone and the new, amazing 2015 is here! Before going more into 2015, I want to take a brief moment to look back of a really different year in my life. In June I moved to Lima, Perú. I cannot believe I have been here already 7 months and volunteering for 6 months. My volunteering period at La Casa de Panchita has been full of experiences; interesting, frustrating, happy but most of all I think I have learned a lot about myself, I have had a chance to create wonderful friendships, which I hope will last through a lifetime. I have met so many new people, I am not sure I’ve ever met this many people in a very short time. Lima has shown me different faces: grey, sunny, sad, funny and much more that has been really hard to describe in words. (My excuse for writing so seldom in my blog!) 

My volunteering period is almost over. I still have a few reports to write and one more Sunday of English and computer classes. It has been agreed that my last day at La Casa de Panchita is January 14^th, 2015. Muchas gracias a todos mis amigas y amigos en LCP ©.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank you all who have donated and supported La Casa de Panchita! If you still haven't, it's not too late - our work will continue and you can continue to donate. 

From mid-January I will take a small break and explore Perú, Bolivia and Chile with my lovely friend from Paris. I am sure it will be a wonderful adventure!

When I will arrive back to Lima early February the next chapter of my life will begin. I am starting my work with Alternative Peru organising trips in Lima for tourists to get to know a different side of Lima than just the main tourist sites. We are concentrating on sustainable tourism and are planning trips together with different NGO’s and communities. At the moment we are also have a community stay in Huaraz. Take a look at our trips at Alternative Peru and if you have any question, feel free to send me your questions! We are planning a lot more trips, so you will be hearing a lot more from me J. I am more than happy to help you plan your amazing holiday in Perú!

I am going back to Finland for a short while but returning to Lima by end of April! I cannot wait for this new chapter in my life to begin, but still enjoying the last days of my volunteering.

Hopefully I am able to see as many of my Finnish friends as possible in May and April, but if not, you just need to come and visit me to Perú J!!!!

May all your dreams come true in year 2015! Remember also to help those who might not even have the energy to wish for a better year. You never know where it will lead you!