Peru

Iquitos

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Squirrel monkey ❘ Szabi Nemeth/500px/Getty Images
Padre Cocha village ❘ Kim Schandorff/Getty Images
Amazonian Indigenous Cultures Museum ❘ Mark Green/Alamy
Market in Iquitos ❘ Mark Green/Alamy
Ex Hotel Palace ❘ Allen Sheffield/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 Deed
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Grilled grubs give way to Amazonian adventure and canoeing past pink river dolphins.

Iquitos is basically an island surrounded on nearly all sides by the Amazon and its tributaries, and makes an ideal jumping-off point for deeper exploration of the river.

All across Peru, street vendors sell anticuchos: marinated offal—usually beef hearts—skewered and grilled over charcoal. In the Amazonian city of Iquitos, surrounded by river and jungle, you’ll find a special type of anticucho called suri. These are small grubs—the fat larvae of the palm weevil, which feeds on palm trees throughout the nearby jungle. Their abundance makes them a particularly sustainable snack. On the streets of Iquitos, vendors marinate them in spices and grill them, skewered, over open flames. They’re at their best eaten hot, when some pick up the taste of hazelnuts and butter. Some cooks also fry them with green plantains, in a dish called chicharrón de suri.

You can find anticuchos de suri at the Mercado Belén, an enormous covered market on the bank of the Itaya River, a tributary of the Amazon. Products at this market change by the day and even the hour, including spices, live animals, meat cuts, produce brought down the river by canoe, medicinal plants, and churos, the giant Amazonian snails that indigenous communities harvest when the river floods, and which sometimes pop up on fine-dining menus in Lima. It’s a bustling and intense introduction to Iquitos, the world’s largest city that cannot be reached by road. (A handful of low-cost carriers fly daily from Lima.)


Iquitos, Peru ❘ Matyas Rehak/Alamy

Iquitos is basically an island surrounded on nearly all sides by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The city saw a rubber boom in the late 19th century, which made it an important export hub and brought in European money and influence. A wrought-iron house said to have been designed by Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel) sits in the city’s main square. Many other buildings remain from the era, reflecting the tastes of long-ago rubber barons. The facades of the Art Nouveau Palace Hotel (now home to military offices) and residential palaces such as the Casa Cohen, for example, are covered in tile from places such as the Netherlands and Portugal. These historical traces intermingle with the buildings along—and in—the river, where wooden huts sit atop stilts to protect them from fluctuating water levels.

The city makes an ideal jumping-off point for deeper exploration of the Amazon, and a number of sustainable or ecologically minded operators offer river tours and jungle expeditions. The city’s Museum of Indigenous Cultures also offers an important introduction to the people here. You can canoe along the Amazon’s tributaries, take a night hike, spot the local pink river dolphins, learn about permaculture at an ecolodge, spend time with one of many indigenous communities, or stop by a wildlife sanctuary that rehabilitates manatees, ocelots, and other injured or abandoned animals.

KEEP WANDERING

Additional resources to learn more about Iquitos and its region

Kelwin’s Amazon Adventures

Locally-owned river tours.
Learn More

La Isla de los Monos

An animal sanctuary and rescue center 30 km from the city.
Learn More

Amazonia Expeditions

Discover wildlife in the Amazon.
Learn More

Museum of Amazonian Indigenous Cultures

Get to know the locals.
Learn More
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