In this vast terrain is the largest canyon in the world, created the largest river in the world geography and the only living species of pink dolphin known to marine biologists. Peru and the lost civilization of the Incas are still a big unknown for the vast majority of tourists. Today we begin this series with one of the treasures hidden in this amazing country: Iquitos, capital of the Peruvian Amazon.
Photography by yonel_campos
In the heart of the Amazon jungle, 100 meters is the beautiful colonial jewel of Iquitos, born in the confluence of the Maranon and Ucayali rivers. With nearly half a million inhabitants, it is the largest city in the world that are not accessible by road, connecting with the outside is only by boat or plane. When next the landing, can be clearly distinguished bird’s eye view of the whimsical curves of “winding river”, the mythical Amazon, and its many tributaries that give it its deserved reputation as the world’s largest river.
The Peruvian Amazon is a magically preserved ecosystem. Iquiteños say that here, at the confluence of the Maranon and Ucayali rivers, was born the legendary Amazon River. Iquitos is in the province of Loreto and is the only city in all of Peru inaccessible by land, so the Jesuit missionaries found here with a dual task: to evangelize the Indians of the region and almost as complicated to be able to reach this remote corner away from the rest of the planet, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, where there are still vestiges of the golden years of the rubber boom reflected in the elegant decadent colonial mansions whose facades are made of blue tiles brought from Portugal. Even Gustave Eiffel, in the boom of the time came to build a curious iron house in the main square of this unique destination.
Today, the rubber boom has been replaced by the black gold, as shown by the refinery on the banks of the Amazon. The lush and thick green jungle are only interrupted by the course of this amazing river of brown water, for which our ancestors sailed Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, who was named the Amazon.
Photography by lehnin78
Night falls in the forest. Gradually, the suns is hiding behind the Wild Reeds removed by the clay, and begin to receive the first night sounds. You hear a concert of crickets in the background, while wild monkeys howl from the giant trees and a small kingfisher with its beak tapped one of the giants of the primary forest trees, whose leaves almost touch the sky. Outside it’s hot and humid, and the many hues of sunset color the sky Amazon blue pink in tone, drawing the canvas of a tropical idyll.
It could be the real jungle Tarzan, where electricity, hot water, connecting with the outside world and the media is reduced to a primitive drum handmade tribal sounds emitted from them are known it is almost time for dinner or to do some nighttime raid in the jungle to see the huge variety of birds and mammals. Among the latter, is the pink or red dolphin, a species that can only be seen in the Amazon and, of course, the legendary piranha lurking around canoes restless tourists. Among the Amazonian flora, in addition to more than 60,000 varieties of trees and tropical plants to those already enough names to call them, are featured in this huge forest epiphytes, living on top of trees, such as bromeliads and orchids, decorated with colorful butterflies.
Similarly, medicinal plants like cat’s claw or the mysterious “ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant used by Amazonian shamans to deal effectively with proven principles of cancer or gastrointestinal disease.
Photography by exedu
So we end our virtual tour of this vast jungle in a corner of the planet.