Tag Archives: travel

Up the Amazon River in a cargo boat

Published in The Tico Times on December 19th, 2015

IQUITOS, Peru — We have to get our entrance stamp for Peru before the office closes at 5 p.m. The cargo boat is scheduled to leave for Iquitos at around 8 p.m., so we have some time to kill in the little port of Santa Rosa. It’s basically a row of wooden shacks with corrugated iron roofs by the Amazon River.

Workers load kilos and kilos of fish into a container with ice. It must be hard work for them under the blazing sun and in this Amazonian heat and humidity. Their shirts are soaked with sweat.

We sit down for a beer and watch the sky above the jungle turn purple and red. Smoke rises from the houses between the hazy jungle growth, and when the sun sets we see lights switch on, on the Colombian side of the river in Leticia. This is the point in the Amazon jungle where the three countries Brazil, Colombia and Peru come together. From here, you can go by boat to the east, into Brazil towards Manaus, or like us, you can move against the current into Peru, to Iquitos.

Continue reading Up the Amazon River in a cargo boat