Vilcabamba to Iquitos
South America Tour 2013-15 – Part IV
Gosh! How do I get from Vilcabamba to Iquitos?
There is more than one way to travel from Ecuador to Peru:
One - certainly a more comfortable one - would be to take the international bus from Loja to Piura (about 8h) and then spend another fourteen hours on a direct bus to Tarapoto.
Another one: From Vilcabamba you could go directly south and cross the less frequented border "La Balsa".
There would be a third one - by land up to Coca, further down the Napo with cargo ships, off through the jungle - but we have already eliminated it for reasons of money and above all because it is hardly foreseeable how long the journey would take.
Between the other two, we toggle. One easy and safe, the other on the more direct way, but exhausting. All puzzling around and asking questions doesn't help. To know, you have to experience for yourself.
So we dismiss the first option as too boring, because - as worn out as the saying may be - the way still remains the goal. Early in the morning, we get on an old bus from Vilcabamba to Zumba. No one, neither Internet nor the tourist information, could tell us how long we would need for this bus ride. We expect four to ten hours - depending on the condition of the bus and the road.
A good, new road winds through the mountains, beautiful views are offered to us. The bus stops again and again and workers, students, and others get on or off. Then, after about two or three hours, we drive out of a village onto an unpaved mud road, softened by the rain. Only now do we see why it is impossible to predict how long the trip will take. Some passages are in quite a good condition, but often landslides block large parts of our way. The bus driver skilfully circles around the mounds at walking speed. On the left, there is the danger of sliding into the depths, and on the right, of being hit by further masses of earth.
If we were on our own, I didn't think this jungle road would lead anywhere. "Dirt Road to Nimmerwo (Nowhere)" would probably be an appropriate name for it.
Then comes the first breakdown of our South American trip. And since brakes are an advantageous thing, especially on this road, the air pressure valve has to be repaired willy-nilly - just like MacGyver with rubber and screws lying around. Better not to look closely, I think to myself. But then: Why not? You can still learn something!
After six hours we arrive in Zumba, a small town in the Andes near the Peruvian border. Here we change into a safari-like vehicle: a truck with wooden benches on the loading area, covered, but open on both sides. Compared to the road, no, path, no, trail we are now traveling, the road to Zumba must be called a highway.
Leisurely we buck and bump along the path. Shortly after the descent, my backside and kidneys hurt from the constant bouncing. Good, we need for the fourteen kilometers to the border not much longer than ninety minutes.
The border consists more or less of a bridge. On both sides, there are a few houses. For every dollar we change, we get almost three soles. The exit and entry formalities are handled quite casually. We are in Peru!
Next, we have to get to San Ignacio. To do this, we are loaded into a collective taxi and chauffeured over a brand new road, which, however, is so swamped with landslides that the driver has to slalom all the time. He shifts gears and cuts curves. Scary. Tired, we arrive in the small town an hour later. It is already dark. We look for accommodation and fall exhausted into a deep sleep.
Already the next morning we sit in a colectivo and travel on. Before we arrive at our destination, we have to change buses twice. You have to be patient there. It seems to us that we wait almost longer until the minibusses are full than the trips take.
After two long days on the road, we are finally here: Chachapoyas.
The Andean city is increasingly visited by tourists, although it is off most people's itineraries. Like everyone who comes here, we take a tour to the Kuélap ruins. The small fortress, once home to three to four thousand people, sits atop a high hill above the clouds. It was built long before the time of the Incas by the Chachapoyas ("cloud people").
For several hours our guide Manuel accompanies us through the stone ruins and enriches our knowledge with the peculiarities of that ancient people.
After resting for a while in cool Chacha, we continue our journey: nine hours in the minibus to Tarapoto and another three to Yurimaguas, where all roads end and the Amazon, a world of rivers, begins.
Here we want to change to a ship that should bring us to Iquitos within three days. Our moto-taxi driver, on the other hand, recommends that we take a speedboat, which is only slightly more expensive but covers the distance in one and a half days.
The next morning we are sitting in a longboat filled with plastic chairs, fortunately, equipped with a roof and plastic sheets as sidewalls. Above the river landscape, it is bucketing down. We regret already our decision to have taken the speedboat. Traveling in a hammock on the cargo ship would certainly be nicer than sitting here in the narrow rows.
The hours drag on. Sometime in the course of the morning, the rain subsides. The first patches of blue appear in the sky and individual rays of sunlight reach down to us. The plastic sheets on the sides can be laced up, which makes the trip much more pleasant since there is finally something to see.
The whole day we are on the way on a wide brown river in the direction of Iquitos. It is already pitch dark when we moor in a village. There is no electricity here, hardly anything can be seen. Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen now. Are there accommodations? Rooms? Hammocks? Neither. We have to make ourselves comfortable on the boat. At least everyone is fed with a plate of rice, yucca, and fish. Instead of enjoying the silence on the river in the dark of night, two of our neighbors know nothing more clever to do than to blast away on their cell phones. They sit side by side lying on their chairs and play through their entire music list. Simultaneously. Pretty loud. Without sense or taste.
Everyone has settled in, the captain has also already thrown himself into the hammock next to us. At first, I think, now the two will be stopped and soon it will be quiet. Then I hear how wrong I am. Now the three of them are playing around on their phones, one louder than the other. Easily noting that their toys certainly have more capacity than their brain waves. Defeated, I lie back, squeeze in my earplugs and try to relax.
At 3.3o in the morning, we are awakened from a restless sleep. We continue. The night is pitch black. The darkness is only fragmented by the glow of our flashlights. A boat mate shines his ultra-strong flashlight out into the river and shows the captain, who is operating the engines in the back, the way through driftwood and sandbanks.
When dawn finally breaks, a bird concert begins. Everywhere it flutters and whistles. A kingfisher seems to enjoy flying alongside the boat. An iguana lies in a branch on the shore, waiting for the warming sun. We doze off. Hour after hour passes. The view is always the same: brown river, cloudy sky (the clouds sometimes take on spectacular shapes), green bushes and trees to the left and right, in which wooden huts sometimes appear; usually too few to call them villages.
And then - and then we are suddenly there. Our stupor lifts. Although only in Nauta, still not in Iquitos, we are nevertheless glad to fall into a bed here to digest the long journey. Iquitos is only an hour's drive away, which we postpone for the time being.
Days have passed since we left Vilcabamba, Ecuador. We have traveled in all kinds of vehicles, long hours until our buttocks fell asleep. The experience was worth it. Nevertheless, Seraina and I are more and more determined to travel South America with our own car in the not too distant future. Too much lost between A and B while sitting in the bus and just marveling out the window.
Tomorrow we will leave rested for Iquitos, which lies in the middle of the jungle, cut off from the outside world, accessible only by boat or plane, and yet home to half a million people. Before our volunteer assignment at the Pilpintuwasi animal orphanage begins, we still have a few days to take a closer look at the city.
South America Tour 2013-15
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South America Tour 2013-15
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