WHERE THEwiLD THINGS ARE The jungle-locked city of Iquitos can only be reached by boat or plane and, as the Amazon swells, becomes a jumping-off point for forays into the rainforest. Francis Pearce explores its food and its future PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT POGSON 80 FOOD & TRAVEL gourmet traveller WHERE THEwiLD THINGS ARE The jungle-locked city of Iquitos can only be reached by boat or plane and, as the Amazon swells, becomes a jumping-off point for forays into the rainforest. Francis Pearce explores its food and its future FOOD & TRAVEL 81 PREVIOUS PagES: YagUA INDIAN CHIEF; RED HOWLER MONKEY. LEFT: FISHERMAN COOKING CARACHAMA AND YUCA AT TRAVEL INFORMATION HIS TEMPORARY CAMP. OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM Currency is the Peru Nuevos Soles (£1=PEN4.68). Iquitos is TOP LEFT: five hours behind GMT. The climate is warm and humid but, EVENINGS SPENT DRIFTING ON THE despite an average temperature of 26°C, it can rain suddenly MIGHTY RIVER; BUTTERFLY AT and frequently. There is, on average, 54cm of precipitation in PILPINTUWASI February and March with humidity at around 85%. The average faRM; AMAZON EXPLORATIONS daily temperature in February/March is 27°C. ON-BOARD AQUA; ROLLED MARANTA LEAVES USED GETTING THERE TO WRAP FOOD; Iquitos is one of the most populated cities in the world that LOCAL BIRD, THE BARBET; WILda cannot be reached by road, its airport is about 7kms from the FROM THE HATUM POZA COMMUNITY town centre with flights to Lima departing four times a day (flight time is one-hour 45-minutes). Moto-taxis (£1.50) or a standard taxi (£3) are available from the airport to the centre of town. ink dolphins and walking catfish swim among the trees. The FLIGHTS Amazon is rising early and may fall again but at its peak in May, Iberia (0870 609 0500; iberia.com) flies daily to Lima from P the river will have gained 15 metres or so, drowning four-fifths Heathrow, via Madrid. You can then take a connecting flight with of the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in the Loreto Province. In the LAN Airlines (0800 977 6100; lan.com) from Lima to Iquitos. Barrio de Belén, wooden houses rise on balsa rafts secured to poles TAM Airlines (020 8897 0005; tam.com.br). The Brazilian airline and the painted concrete shops open for business one floor up as offers flights from Heathrow via São Paulo to Lima, where you the streets flood to head-height and water laps at the main square can then take a connecting flight to Iquitos. and its candy-coloured bandstand. This is the edge of Iquitos, a port 3,000kms upriver from the sea, in a Pacific country where ships steam BOAT up from the Atlantic and rafts ride the current. Save for its metalled link The town can also be reached by boat from Pucallpa (4-7 to Nauta 100kms south, Iquitos is one of the most populated cities days) or Yurimaguas (3-6 days). Boats leave Iquitos from Puerto in the world that cannot be reached by road. In the centre, the moto- Masusa, on Avenue La Marina 3kms north of the town centre. taxi is the main form of transport: a Thai tuk-tuk hauled by a straining Ask the captain or see chalkboards at the pier for estimated 125cc Chinese motorbike and capable of carrying a driver plus two or departure times as boats can often leave late. Boats depart three passengers and a load. about three times a week to Pucallpa or more frequently to Iquitos’s outskirts gradually transform from lush greenery to a sprawl Yurimaguas. The journey costs around £15. You can also take of low houses and businesses with hand-painted signs, which then boats from here to the Peruvian border with Brazil and Colombia morph into grander streets where the buildings speak of colonial links roughly twice a week, the journey takes two days. to Europe. The Plaza de Armas, the main square, houses the city’s smartest hotel as well as the main church, the Iglesia Matriz, and RESOURCES Gustave Eiffel’s Casa de Fierro, or Iron House, a kit job of steel parts PromPeru (peru.info). This should be your first stop for that were shipped to Iquitos after the 1889 Paris Exhibition. Each information on visiting Peru, including visas, local history, tourist Sunday morning, come torrential rain or hazy sunshine, the square maps and suggested itineraries. is rimmed by soldiers, sailors, veterans and junior firefighters, saluting iPeru main hall at the airport and Calle Napo 232, Plaza de the flag. In the evening the Malecón Tarapacá, or riverside boulevard, Armas, Iquitos. These information centres have free maps and a street away is alive with children hawking T-shirts and jungle the friendly English-speaking staff can help you select the most jewellery while Capoeira martial arts dancers arc and whirl to music reliable guide for jungle tours. from boom boxes that bounces off the walls of former mansions and carries down to palm-roofed houses on stilts below. The Malecón FURTHER READING now overlooks the Itaya River; the fast-flowing Amazon moved away Peru guidebooks from both Lonely Planet (£14.99) and National just a few years ago. The precise place at which they join is clearly Geographic Traveler (£14.99) are comprehensive introductions visible from the air, liquorice on one side of the interface, caramel on to the country with sections on Iquitos and the Amazon, and the other; one side slow-moving and acidic, the other a fast-flowing suggestions for where to eat, sleep and recommended tours. colloid of sediment and water. Trail of Feathers: In Search of the Birdmen of Peru We land at the small airport where the carcasses of two passenger by Tahir Shah (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £10). Well-researched jets rot unnervingly at the end of the runway and military helicopters and entertaining, the book is a colourful exploration of the rich sit on the tarmac. Iquitos is not only a port with its own mythical and shamanistic history of the Amazon basin. 82 FOOD & TRAVELTRAVEL FOOD & TRAVEL 8175 gourmet traveller BELOW: ACHIOTE, THE SEEDS OF THE ANNOTTO TREE ARE EATEN AND USED AS A VIBRANT FACE PAINT. OPPOSITE, FROM TOP TO BOTTOM: BORA CHIEF; FISHING ON THE BLACK WATERS; STEAMING FISH AND POUNDING RICE IN PREPARATION FOR A RAINFOREST FEAST; SHARP-TOOTHED PIRANHA; SPOTTING EXOTIC WILDLIFE ALONG THE RIVERBANK; HOUSE AT HATUM POZA shipyard but also a garrison town, in which the army has sequestered many of the historic buildings. At the start of the 20th century, British, American and German rubber barons used private armies and forced, native labour to make more money than they knew what to do with, building their grand houses on the Malecón. In the 1970s, oil brought mixed blessings. Now, in a less marked way, it is tourism and Peru’s culinary revolution that bring money to the region, and there may be more wealth to come if the rainforest can be exploited without destroying it. One of the indigenous tribes that suffered disaster at the hands of the rubber barons, the Bora, is now teaching Peruvian scientists the secrets of agroforestry, growing food and medicines in the rainforest, at a time when forest ingredients are adding to the already remarkable breadth and diversity of Peruvian cuisine. Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, celebrity chef and owner of the restaurant Malabar in Lima, spent a year in Iquitos researching rainforest recipes and ingredients, and has since designed the menu on the Aqua, a luxurious floating hotel that enables the well-heeled amateur naturalist to venture upriver and foray into the two million-hectare reserve. One of Schiaffino’s culinary inventions, carachama caviar, is made with WE HEAD UPRIVER SPOTTING MONKEYS the eggs of the walking catfish, Brazil nut cheese and breadfruit blinis. In the Amazon, carachama, with a head like a scout car and STREAMING THROUGH THE TREES. AT THE an armoured body, are plentiful in the low season and are commonly CAMPSITE, FRAGRANT PANS OF YUCA AND used to make fish broth. Its brain is fed to small children in the belief CARACHAMA ARE SUSPENDED OVER A FIRE that it will help them talk and its bones are a rare source of calcium in an area where people eat few vegetables and no dairy products. Its opalescent orange eggs hatch in burrows along the riverbank and the fish crawl over mud and into the water using their pectoral fins. Kingfishers have been known to take over the burrows and rear their families in them, too. We take a skiff upriver spotting squirrel monkeys streaming through the trees, about 40 of them in addition to howlers, tiny tamarinds, rare WHERE TO STAY scarlet macaws, a three-toed sloth – soporific, resting in the elbow of a tree – and a harpy eagle in striking distance but seemingly oblivious Aqua Expeditions (00 511 368 3868; aquaexpeditions.com). to its prey. At a temporary campsite in a clearing by the Dorado-Warmi Explore the region by boat; the 12 large suites all have full- River we meet 55-year-old José from Genaro Herrara, a day’s row height panoramic windows. The crew includes English-speaking away. Skin tanned and leathery, barefoot and wearing an old soccer naturalists and the menu uses rainforest ingredients. The boat has shirt he is chest-high to a tall European and half the weight, but all its own water and waste treatment systems to limit environmental muscle and sinew. Four poles thrust into the leafy ground denote a impact. Three-night itinerary from £1,300 or seven-nights from sleeping area.