Iquitos

One more plane, and then the real Amazon journey begins. I think I read somewhere that Iquitos is the largest city in the world that has no road connection to other parts of the country It belongs to. So a plane was the only alternative to seven days on the Rio Ucayali.The plan was to get to Iquitos and leave as soon as we could get a boat, with roughly two weeks left before arrival in Belem at the beginning of December for FOSS4G. and SOTM LATAM. In the end it was to be an overnight stay, there was a ferry leaving the next day for the Triple Frontier shared by Peru, Colombia and Brazil.

With the ticket bought for the first leg we could relax and explore some of the city. Iquitos is bigger, and busier, than Pucallpa but the tuk tuk style transport still dominates. The days of the rubber boom, and associated exploitation of local people,are long gone. But some of the buildings from that time survive, We explored a museum telling some of that story and with a selection of some of the earliest maps made of Peruvian Amazonia. And of course we did our own small mapping contribution, adding some points of interest for the central area to OSM. Some of those were added whilst having a beer on the balcony of a metal building designed by Mr Eiffel himself and overlooking the main square - mapping is hot work in Amazonia.