Peru, Amazon
* video summary in the end
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
To see the Amazon river was on our bucket list. We hesitated a lot while choosing a place, because there are many rain-forest natural parks with unique flora and fauna. You can see the Amazon forest from Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and even Bolivia, even if there is no actual Amazon river :). After some research we chose Iquitos, the largest city situated deep in the rain forest in Peru. It is the biggest in the world that cannot be reached by road – it is accessible only by river and air. It would take us almost a week by river, so we chose a plane.
plane Lima – Iquitos (Peru) 
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
There are multiple agencies that offer tours to the Amazon, no need to reserve in advance, its even much cheaper to book at the last moment, but it maybe also depends on the season. We were there in the end of June. We didn’t have any problem to find an agency and were very happy in the end about this tour, our guide and the price. (it costed us 700 pesos = 185€ per person for 5 days and 4 nights with Lupuna jungle tour; but don’t have any big expectations about living conditions for that price!).
Arrival
We left Iquitos by boat, the camping site was not too far away from the city by river, about 1 hour. But there is no need to go far, the jungles are everywhere!
The first thing that we realized when we exit the boat is that we forgot our well prepared hygienic bag with mosquito sprays, toothpaste, soap etc. Small panic at the beginning, but luckily there are good people in the world that were ready to share their stuff with us. I can’t imagine to stay 5 days without soap, anyway you sweat all the time, but mosquito spray is vital there… at least for tourists, because our guides didn’t use any and seemed to be immune to mosquito bites 🙂
taxi boats to jungle villages 
fish market 
local market with piranhas 
when it rains, it rains HARD!
The camp was located quite far from the Amazon shore. As we were told, the coastal camp was flooded before and they decided to move it deeper into the forest for safety reasons.
Upon arrival they brought us rubber boots and we went to work (the forest ground never dries out, humidity is very high!).
After a small walk through the mud we used small wooden canoes and finally reached our camp. There were even less facilities than we expected, although we are not the most spoiled tourists. The site was still very new, there was only one kitchen building where we ate, and 4 bungalows. As I understood later we had a VIP one, because we had a bucket with water and a private “toilet”, others had to use a small curtain bungalow in the kitchen… There was no electricity, so they used a huge peace of ice as a fridge to store some food for us. At night we used electrical lamps and a wood fire. That was the real remote jungle experience and we really liked it! (Although we were happy to return to the civilization, to the cold drinks and air conditioning! lol)
kitchen bungalow 
4 living bungalows
Our bungalow from inside
Path to the camp
Our first walk in the rain forest
I can describe it with a few words : hot, sweaty, muddy and itchy from constant mosquito bites. Oh yeah, NO ANIMALS! I couldn’t imagine how hard is to spot them there. They are masters of camouflage and they avoid people as much as they can!
drinking water from a vine 
bird watching towers 
the juice of this tree is used to produce rubber, that’s why it is covered in scars 
you can use this tree as a drum to indicate your location 
I even found my Tarzan there! 🙂
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
Night
There are more chances to discover wildlife at night, so each night we went through the jungles. It is truly unique experience, when your deepest fears and instincts are activated in you. There are so many sounds and still it is very difficult to spot any life around you.
Our house pet 🙂 
Visiting local villages
There were many small communities along the Amazon not far away from our camp, so we could visit and see how the people live.
our boat 
entrance to the village 
main square is always a football field 🙂 
all houses are standing on stilts in case of flooding
this plant they use as bowls for food or water
Our guides drink moonshine from Amazon
we decided to skip this part of the excursion 🙂
Other village
Here as well the football field is in the center of the village.
collecting drinking water 
school 
weird insect
Swimming and fishing in Amazon
Another important part of the tour is fishing for piranhas, swimming in the Amazon and watching dolphins…..yes, there are DOLPHINS in the Amazon! Some people think that there are two different species, grey and pink one (quite ugly shapes), but in reality grey dolphins become pink with time.
That was for sure the best part of the tour for me, because you don’t need to mash the mud in the forest, and there were less mosquitoes on the boat.
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
fishing piranhas 
they were veeery small, but big enough to bite your thinger! ) 
cotton tree
Animal sanctuary
As I wrote before, to see a wildlife in the forest is very difficult, and our guides proposed us to see an animal sanctuary where we can see animals saved from poachers or found very sick.
At least that’s what they told us, ans we thought that was a good idea. But we found strange that they had one animal of each species at a time, as if they were specially collected… unfortunately we couldn’t check reviews without Internet, so it’s better to check that before you leave to a tour.
weird turtle 
Sloth
toucan 
blind anaconda 
it was temporally blind while shedding its skin 
Amazon’s huge and gorgeous TREES
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Monkeys
We also visited monkey rescue center La isla de los monos, and it seemed to us as a reliable sanctuary for animals and not a tourist trap.
he wanted to eat leaves from my T-shirt! 
Night in a tent away from camp.
The last night we decided to sleep in the tent surrounded by the jungle. Our guide really didn’t want to sleep outside of the camp and tried to and tried to talk us out of it by telling creepy stories and that we would be too far and if we changed our mind there would be no way back.
But we decided for adventure! Finally we were not so far from the camp, because when we started setting up our tents, it appeared that they were broken, and our guide went back to change it.
After installing our tents, and having an incredible dinner (one full papaya for 3 of us! 🙂 ), we took a trip through the night forest, searching for caymans, but unfortunately we didn’t find them. lol
“walking tree” –
it can move slowly thanks to its multiple trunks, in order to find more sun
while the guide was away, Wout fixed out tent with vines :)))) 
salamander
Rowing the Amazonia
The last day of our amazon rain-forest adventure we spent rowing the kayak through mangroves and spotting different plants and birds.
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!
The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!