Primeros pasos en Iquitos

Estas de vacaciones. Te decidiste a visitar la selva amazónica. Compraste tu pasaje aéreo y estas ahora en Iquitos. Pero aparte de visitar un albergue no sabes muy bien qué hacer. Muchos de nosotros llegamos a Iquitos con mucha emoción, pero sin tener muy claro las opciones que nos brinda esta ciudad. No te preocupes. En este artículo te daremos una mano y te mostraremos qué ofrece la ciudad más caliente del país (literalmente).

Para empezar nuestra primera recomendación es que evites en la medida de lo posible alojarte en zonas demasiado céntricas, ya que la ciudad está plagada de ruidosos mototaxis y todo ese ruido puede hacer que tu experiencia no sea la más paradisíaca. Más abajo encontraras una lista de los hospedajes recomendados.

La ciudad es segura. Salvo que salgas a la calle con cámara a la vista y tratando de mostrar a todos que eres turista. En ese caso, como en cualquier parte del mundo, puedes ser víctima de los amigos de lo ajeno. Es recomendable tener un perfil bajo y no intimar con extraños.

¿Qué visitar?
Iquitos es una pequeña ciudad con un gran rango de lugares para conocer. Uno de ellos es la visita obligada al centro de la ciudad. En La plaza de Armas podemos encontrar La iglesia Matriz, pequeña pero simpática. También veremos la casa de hierro construida por Gustave Eiffel a finales del siglo XIX. Se dice que fue la primera casa prefabricada en América Latina.

Una cuadra más abajo se encuentra el boulevard, con una hermosa vista del río Itaya. En el pasado el río Amazonas estaba en su lugar, y para evitar la erosión desviaron su cauce. Una obra de ingenio e ingeniería charapa. En el boulevard encontraremos el mercado artesanal Anaconda, donde podrás conseguir recuerdos pintorescos, textiles y artesanías. Cerca de los cuarteles militares encontraremos El Museo Amazónico con cerámicos de antiguas tribus del lugar, textiles hermosos y las impresionantes esculturas del querido Felipe Lettersen. Si llegamos en temporada seca podremos bajar a la rivera y tener una vista muy diferente de la ciudad.

Una actividad de una mañana es la visita al zoológico de Quistococha. Al llegar seremos gratamente sorprendidos por una serie de mitos ilustrados, de estilo Naif pero divertidos. La sección de aves y monos es muy visitada, y el bufeo Rosado que tienen está muy bien educado. Particularmente a nosotros no nos gusta ver a los animales en cautiverio, pero sabemos que muchos de los visitantes quieren conocer este zoológico de todas maneras.

Una opción que nos parece muchísimo mejor para observar fauna es el Mariposario y Orfanato de animales Pilpintuwasi. Se ubica a unos minutos del pueblo de Padrecocha. El amor por los animales y su cuidado es algo que sorprende gratamente.

Recycling in Christmas.

Here some ideas about how to recycle useless objects into nice  decoration.  Avoid buying cheap plastic stuff and re use yours!

Aqui algunas ideas de como reciclar objetos inútiles en el hogar y convertirlos en una bonita decoración. ¡Evita comprar cosas de plástico barato y reusa las cosas que tienes en casa!

Adorno de arbol hecho con una placa de circuitos.

Arbol de cartón de pizzas. Peperoni no incluido.
Decoración hecha con cds reciclados

Meet the Saddleback Tamarin (saguinus fuscicollis)

A couple of years ago some friend of mine  asked me for  receiving a small monkey at home. At that moment i was living at Amazon rainforest, Perú, starting Amazon Action . A weird feeling invaded me. It was an small animal, in the middle of the city at the hand of somebody that didn't really care about animals. Inmediatly i agreed, thinking about my responsability of taking care of wildlife, as a businessman in the middle of peruvian rainforest.

This was one of the first pics i took of the monkey. At the beggining i supposed that was a male. My friend Roshi, living at home at that time, discovered that in fact was a female. She called her Sophia.

Sophia was a starlight in our life. Tender as a baby, smart as a human and with the incredible hability to explore everything and play with us. I knew that my mission with her was to release her again into the wild. But she needed to grow.

So she became part of our family. We took her to our trips to the jungle, to make her comfortable with the wildlife again, and to put her in touch with the forest.  

Some days she had a great behavior at the lodge. Others i had to let her at my cabin because it was imposible to have lunch together with the guests. 

Some days she used to go to play with other wild monkeys that lives near the lodge. But she always came back.  The next step was to take her to a wild place. Our camping place at Lupunillo was the perfect place to put her in the wild with the supervision of Mrs. Nelly.  

Now Sophia lives there. Next step is needed. She needs to get used to the wild without company of humans. That only will happen when we start to run the rehab center for amazon wildlife. In the meantime i'm counting the days to go to visit her this next week. 

ANALYSIS-Peru Amazon conflict exposes rift over economic policy

Amazon thought to have substantial oil, mineral reserves. Indian population for long neglected by government. Both sides blame the other for recent violence

By Marco Aquino (from reuters)

BAGUA GRANDE, Peru, June 9 (Reuters) - Potentially lucrative oil and mineral reserves lie in Peru's vast Amazon region, but its Indian inhabitants are furious at being left out of plans to profit from the jungle.

Weeks of tribal protests against government plans to open up communal lands to oil drilling, mining and logging boiled over last week into violent clashes with police that killed more than 60 people.

For angry subsistence farmers, President Alan Garcia's efforts to break up the land into parcels of private property to lure foreign investment is the latest slight in a long history of official neglect.

"We live in misery while others come in and take our natural resources and we don't get anything in return," said Sirilo Awachi, a 42-year-old farmer who lives near the poor Amazon town of Bagua Grande.


Brandishing homemade wooden spears and wearing red face paint, thousands of demonstrators battled police to demand that the government repeal new laws that open up Peru's Amazon region to foreign mining and energy companies.

Indian leaders said 40 demonstrators were killed and accused police of opening fire from helicopters, The government said 24 police officers died, some with their throats split. Both sides have accused the other of launching brutal attacks.

The tensions are testing Garcia's drive to tap Peru's natural resource wealth to stoke economic growth. The South American country is a leading producer of silver, copper, zinc and gold, and is home to sizable oil and natural gas reserves.

The unrest also reflects growing frustration among the poor that the benefits of a recent economic boom, fueled by the mining industry, has failed to trickle down in a country where one out of three Peruvians live in poverty.

WOODEN SHACKS, NO WATER OR POWER

The Amazon area is Peru's most underdeveloped region, where Indians tend to their own crops living in wooden shacks with no access to running water or electricity.

"We Indians don't have a future. We don't have schools, we don't have hospitals. We are marginalized," said one protester, Juan Tineo, 30.

Political commentator Cesar Hildebrandt said the conflict is rooted in a history of governments overlooking jungle areas, where just over 10 percent of Peru's nearly 30 million people live.

"In Peru, the jungle has always been seen as a source to be raided for timber, oil and gas. It's never been seriously considered a territory where people actually live," he said, adding that the neglect has hardened Indian groups now building political movements.

Facing the most serious political crisis since he took office in 2006, Garcia lashed out at the protesters, calling them "terrorists" and casting them as obstacles to economic development.

Garcia initially faced calls to sack ministers but they have died down, partly because the deaths were far from urban centers and because he portrayed the police action as an anti-terrorist effort.

Peru was torn apart by a civil war between the army and indigenous "Shining Path" rebels in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and many urban residents are scared of Indian groups.

Some of Garcia's aides have suggested the Amazon protests are backed by left-wing opposition leader Ollanta Humala, who has ties to Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chavez.

Garcia is one of the most pro-Washington leaders in Latin America and has frequently traded accusations with Chavez, a strident anti-American.

But Manuel Saavedra, director of the Lima-based polling group CPI, said Garcia failed to consult indigenous groups about the government plan.

"There was never any dialogue. He didn't talk to the communities enough to sell them on the idea," he said.

Some of the controversial laws that have upset indigenous groups were passed last year as Garcia moved to bring Peru's regulatory framework into compliance with a free-trade agreement with the United States.

The total area being granted to multinational companies covers more than 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon, according to a study by scientists at Duke University. At least 58 of the 64 areas are on lands titled to indigenous peoples, it said.

The government has restored order in Bagua Grande, the focal point of last week's protests, and indigenous groups manning roadblocks in another Amazon town, Yurimaguas, have signaled they will ease their protest.

But there has been no final solution to the conflict and neither side shows signs of giving up. "We are seeing two sides with extreme positions," said Hildebrandt. (Writing and additional reporting by Kevin Gray in Lima; Editing by Kieran Murray)

Amazon Action at Promperú Travel Market 2009