Iquitos- Jungle with change of plan

Leave the hostel, hop on a mototaxi, head to the tourist center 'La Selva'.

When we arrived at the tourist center, I went to a counter to buy a bus ticket to Yurimaguas for us. They told us to just go to a car and we could ride with them. No more than 3 seconds later, our backpacks were strapped on the roof of a van and we were already in the car. However, we still had to wait for 40 minutes in the incredible heat until the car was full. To our surprise, there were 21 people in a car that in Germany would only fit a maximum of 15 people.

After two and a half hours in the stuffy and sweaty bus, we finally arrived in Yurimaguas. As soon as we entered the city, the tuktuk drivers started following us and ran with their hand stretched through the window towards the bus terminal.

Louis, who is actually a very persistent tuktuk driver, but later became a great help, accompanied us the whole day.

The plan was: have lunch, buy hammocks and water, and go to a cargo ship and sail to Iquitos.

Louis first took us to a restaurant where we had soup and rice with chicken again for 6 soles. Then we bought two hammocks and 14 liters of water and went to the 'port'. However, we found out that the Amazon River did not have enough water for the large cargo ships to sail. The problem was that Yurimaguas is the last place with road access to the outside world and Iquitos can only be reached by boat or plane. Our flight to La Paz is on September 23, so we absolutely have to go to Iquitos. We will have a 5-hour layover in Lima, so theoretically we could also board there. But we really wanted to do a tour in the jungle and Lima is too far away. So we went with Louis to a hostel and the plan changed.

On Friday morning, we went to the port at 6:00 am. There we could get on a smaller cargo ship that was going to Lagunas. We hung up our hammocks and watched as people loaded live chickens, gasoline cans, bananas, and a motorcycle. After 12 hours of really exciting and adventurous journey at 17 km/h, we arrived in Lagunas. Two people on the ship helped us with our backpacks and drove us to our accommodation.

When we arrived at the accommodation, we were really shocked. We stayed with a host family in a tin hut.

There were people and chickens everywhere. 12 people lived in the hut, but the parents only have 6 children, I don't know where the others came from. Our bed was an elevated wooden plank without a mattress. The chickens were running on the kitchen table. There was electricity, but no running water, only a well. The toilet is a 10-meter deep hole with a wooden block to sit on. You can lock the doors, but the house is still not completely closed. One positive aspect: the mother was really nice.

We met a German guy who also stayed with the family for one night. However, he was not very sympathetic, as he made it clear to us that after 5 months, we should be fluent in Spanish (even though he made a thousand grammatical mistakes), that we should have a plan for what we want to study next year and where (education, apprenticeship), and that we let ourselves be taken advantage of and that should not happen after such a long stay in Peru.

We also realized that we paid too much for our tour. However, we were taken by surprise in Yurimaguas and had to make a decision.

The next day, I was still shocked because I could never live like the family and I was really disgusted. I even briefly considered a direct flight back to Germany 😂 and thought about canceling our tour, even though we had paid "a lot" of money. Nevertheless, we decided to "close our eyes and push through", because it couldn't get any worse.