Treasures of Traveling on the Amazon River in Iquitos, Peru!

Floating Houses change height with the tide of the Amazon River in Iquitos Peru! These houses float on the river.

We had quite the adventure traveling from our last stop in southern Peru, the beautiful mountainous and colonial city of Arequipa to the hot and humid jungle of the Amazon in Iquitos; the gateway and access point to the Amazon Rainforest in Peru! I write about that adventurous experience on the previous rock slide post. Iquitos is surrounded by the Amazon River on one side and the Amazon Rainforest on all other sides so the only way to reach Iquitos is to either fly there or travel by boat. Therefore, Iquitos is the world’s largest city that can not be reached by any roads. For this reason, Iquitos is also an important port city for this area of Peru as many goods and supplies arrive by boat after a week long journey floating up the Amazon River from the Atlantic Ocean. A journey of over 2,200 miles. We didn’t have the time to travel by boat up the Amazon River as it takes a week, so we decided to fly.

Flying over the Amazon River and Amazon Rainforest was a once in a lifetime type of experience and it was awe inspiring to see just how large it actually is! May I remind you that we were only flying over the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, much smaller than the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. Once we landed, it was clear to see we were in a completely different world from where we had been just a few days earlier in Arequipa. Peru is such a diverse country in land, people and language and there is no better place to see that than Iquitos, which is fairly isolated as it is inaccessible by road. We arrived to Iquitos on a smaller aircraft so we walked directly off the plane and down steps onto the tarmac and one of the biggest changes from Peru’s Coastal Region and the Andes Mountain was the temperature difference. When we stepped out of the plane door, the heat was oppressive. The heat and humidity hit us like a smack in the face and we immediately started sweating and we didn’t stop until we left Iquitos.

Read more about the city of Iquitos on the Treasures Of Traveling website!

-- Luke Keeler

Rock Slide Adventures from Arequipa to Iquitos!

Seeing the rock slide up close for the first time after waiting 48 hours for the rocks to be removed!

We had quite the adventure traveling from our last stop in southern Peru, the beautiful mountainous and colonial city of Arequipa to the hot and humid jungle of the Amazon in Iquitos; the gateway and access point to the Amazon Rainforest in Peru! Iquitos is surrounded by the Amazon River on one side and the Amazon Rainforest on all other sides so the only way to reach Iquitos is to either fly there or travel by boat. Therefore, Iquitos is the world’s largest city that can not be reached by any roads. We didn’t have the time to travel by boat up the Amazon River as it takes a week, so we decided to fly.

We had purchased our plane tickets to Iquitos weeks in advance and just had to make sure we arrived in Lima before our flight departed. We had decided to travel from Arequipa to Lima by bus and even though the bus journey is about a 17 hour trip and wouldn’t save us time traveling, we would be saving money as a bus ticket is less expensive than flying. We had the extra time for bus travel scheduled into our itinerary, but what we didn’t have scheduled into our itinerary was a rock slide. It would have been a great trip viewing the entire southern coastal landscape of Southern Peru along the Pan American Highway, but it actually turned out to be a disaster because of the rock slide. The Pan American Highway is the most important highway in Peru, as it connects all major cities in the country's coastal area from the most northern part of the country to the southern most part, so you can imagine all the traffic that uses this highway that abruptly came to a stand still.

Read more about the rock slide on the Treasures Of Traveling Website!

-- Luke Keeler