Departamento de Loreto Travel and Tourism Guide

Yurimaguas looked a lot better in the daylight.  I discovered that there was a lot more to the town than what I had seen in the limited light of the night before, and that being a quiet Sunday night as well.  Down at the port they didn’t have any information about the boat I wanted to take, even though it was the main one for the route down the river to Iquitos.  It’s not the first time that my Lonely Planet was seriously out of date with information.  I found the offi...

Arrived in Iquitos around 5:30am and was met by someone from the Explorama company who put me on a very strange old bus that was all wood planks inside. I met Debbie and Jan, and Marlene and Carl - two couples from the states on a tour vacation. They were very nice folks! We drove through the villiage just outside of Iquitos which was very primitive. This was my first real look at Peru and I was having severe culture shock! We then drove through the city of Iquitos which was much bigger than ...

Hi friends, I am back in Iquitos Peru. Sorry I haven't posted here lately. I do better when I can obsess on one or two problems. I have been working on too many problems. I had to decide which were most important and work on those. This blog suffered.  Now I want to report what my crew and I have been working on.We are rebuilding our Amazon riverboat, Dawn on the Amazon I. It is longer and wider and can sleep more guests than before. We improved the balance by installing a 100 gallon gas...

My greatest discovery of this trip was that a helicopter is the ideal way to really appreciate the beauty of the amazon rainforest. Since it is completely level for hundreds of miles with hardly any hills at all it is almost impossible to see much from the ground. And the airliners usually fly too high, above the usual low rainclouds which cover up most of the view. Our helicopter flying at no more than 300 meters above tree level provided the ideal platform to appreciate the beauty of t...