Though commonly viewed as a launching pad for exploring Peru’s northern Amazon, Iquitos is swanky and interesting enough to detain travelers for a day or two. It is Peru’s quintessential jungle town and, at nearly half a million inhabitants, is probably the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road. Hemmed in by muddy rivers and flooded rainforest on all sides, Iquitos’s only bridge to the outside world are planes and cargo boats.

Because of its isolation, terrorism never reached here in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps as a result, Iquitos has a relaxed, laid-back vibe that seems much closer to Bangkok than, say, Cusco. The air is thick and steamy, and life revolves around the mile-wide Amazon River, lazy and torpid after collecting water from all of Peru’s major rivers.

People here look Asian, because they are descendants of a dozen different Indian groups, along with waves of Italian, Philippine, and Chinese immigrants. The women have beautiful dark hair and limit their clothing to flip-flops, shorts, and tank tops. The men dress much the same, but forego shirts altogether.

The weather in Iquitos, even during the October–May rainy season, is predictable. The sky dawns blue most days but by late afternoon fills with the clouds of convection storms, which release sheets of cool rain. Between mid-December and June, the Amazon rises a staggering 15 meters (50 feet), carrying silt and fallen trees brought down from the Andes.

The first outsider to see this area was Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana, who made an epic descent down the Amazon River in 1542 and contacted the area’s ethnic groups, which included the Iquitos, Cocamas, Huitotos, Boras, Ticunas, and Orejones. Eventually the Spaniards left the area to the Jesuits, who founded a settlement here in the 1750s but were expelled from Latin America shortly thereafter.

Iquitos had shrunk to only 100 inhabitants when Italian explorer Antonio Raimondi visited in the mid-19th century and described it as a “small Indians’ quarters.”

The ramshackle settlement, however, exploded into one of Peru’s richest cities thanks to the 1880–1912 rubber boom. Monuments to this time, now badly faded, include an iron house designed by Gustav Eiffel in the Plaza de Armas and various Italianate mansions with lavish mahogany interiors and outer walls decorated with Sevillean tiles.

The flip side of the opulence was the oppression and abject poverty of the Indian and mestizo rubber tappers, who lived in virtual enslavement and frequently died of malaria and other diseases. The floating city of Belén, which some call the Venice of South America and others a slum, is also a leftover from that era.

Iquitos is the pioneer of Amazonian tourism, which began here in the 1960s, and is the base for a variety of lodges, cruise ships, and adventure agencies. Other industries include lumber, agriculture, the export of exotic fish and birds, and barbasco, a poisonous plant used by the natives to kill fish that is now being used as an insecticide.

Getting There

Because Iquitos is water locked, nearly all visitors arrive by plane. Iquitos’s airport is 7 km outside of town or a US$5, 20-minute cab ride. Flights only arrive between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m., because the air is congested with birds during the daytime hours, and it is wise to know where you are going before boarding a taxi. Many drivers will insist on driving you to second-rate hotels that give them commissions.

All three of Peru’s major airlines fly from Lima: LAN (Lima tel. 01/213-8200 or Iquitos tel. 065/23-2421, www.lan.com), Aerocondor (Lima tel. 01/614-6014 or Iquitos tel. 065/23-1086, www.aerocondor.com.pe), and Star Perú (Lima tel. 01/705-9000 or Iquitos tel. 065/23-6208, www.starperu.com).

The only other way to enter or leave Iquitos is by boat. From Puerto Masusa, on the north end of Iquitos, boats leave for Pucallpa and Yurimaguas (US$25–110), and sporadically on the weekends for Puerto de Coca in Ecuador up the Río Napo (US$30, 15 days). Public colectivo boats head upstream to Nauta from the Puerto Bella Vista-Nanay, 15 minutes outside of town and reachable from buses that run along Próspero. Boat tickets should be bought the day of or the day before departure.

Covered passenger boats also go down the Amazon from here to Pevas and the border towns of Leticia, Colombia, and Tabatinga, Brazil. Two recommended options are Golfinho (Raymondi 350, tel. 065/22-5118) and Hover Amazon Express (Raimondi 390, tel. 065/23-3201). The boats leave from a small dock on Marina Avenue across from the San Carlos gas station.