Iquitos is one of the craziest cities I have ever seen with Tuk Tuks everywhere and some rather unsavoury ex pat locals who still seem to think they are in colonial India. We decided to spend a few days just hanging out before heading back to Lima. On our first night back we bumped into Ali and Damien purely by chance. They had taken a boat down through Venezuela and into Iquitos. They looked a little worn round the edges but it sounded like a really funny experience. They had to sleep on hammocks outside on the deck. Apparently there were so many people on the boat that hammocks were put up above and below their own so that you had a layer of people sleeping directly above and directly below you, with no room to move either way.
Anyway, while we were chatting, the owner of the bar came over wanting to be friendly. He asked us all our names and what we did at home (the first person to have done this since we got out here – bloody spoil sport). He’d forgotten that he’d asked us the very same questions just before we had left on our jungle trip and had made our breakfast's stone cold by insisting he sit with us and tell us all about his experiences there. I don’t know what it was – maybe the fact that his gorgeous local wife was at least 30 years younger than him, but something about him made me shudder. He kept on winging about the kids stealing and when he did so his eyes would really screw up in a Bush/Putin kind of way, but then went on and on about how much he helps them.
I made the mistake of telling him I used to work for the BBC. He dashed inside saying that there was someone else here from the beeb. About 10 mins later he came out with David Attenborough and a TV crew! How weird is that? It was really embarrassing. Blokie came up and introduced us. David and the crew looked just as embarrassed as we did - or at least me anyway. We swapped pleasantries. I sheepishly told him I used to work for Breakfast. They are working on a docco and will be staying in and around Iquitos for the next three weeks. I always find non TV people’s reactions to famous people amusing. The rest of the gang were stunned – and really excited to have spoken to him. I was just horribly embarrassed that the chap had clearly given them no choice but to come over and say hello. It was cool to meet him though – especially there – it was almost as if our jungle trip wasn't real after all and we’d just been watching it on the telly.
The next day, we all went to the Iquitos river market. Alongside slabs of raw meat, buckets of dinosaur like catfish, Amazon lotions, potions and hallucogens, stray dogs and a million people were pots of huge, fat transparent yellow slug type things squirming in bowls with a 'here's one we made earlier' stew by the side proudly displaying the end result of this particular dish. In addition to I'm a Celebrity style delicacies, my overriding memory of that market will always be trying to dodge the flying bits of fat and blood as a woman axed a huge slab of meat on a wooden table right in the middle of the main path through the market. Another stall had bits of chopped up turtle legs that were covered in blood. I was trying desperately hard not to let the horror show on my face.
Nearby the boat villagers put away their wares for the day. Hundreds of wooden shacks - some on sticks - some on huge logs - layer their way to the river. Wooden slats placed in a triangle and opening straight onto the river serve as toilets. Hundreds of tiny wooden boats lay idle. All of them come with a bucket or a cut off plastic bottle. They sail the boats in pairs. One paddles while the other empties out water leaking into the boat through the gaps in the wood.
We went to see a butterfly farm the other day that has also ended up being a small animal sanctuary. They have a fantastic jaguar – he was captured as a baby and used by the **nt to parade around for tourists. When the animal got too big to handle he begged the owners of the sanctuary to take him off his hands. I guess at least he did that. The owners say he could never survive the jungle on his own now. They’ve also got an ant eater and two fabulous monkeys. I love monkeys, but they do scare me a little. The first ones I had come across were in Bali and they were vicious little shits. Not these guys. They both had sad stories – both were found battered and beaten for some reason. Thankfully they were in perfect health by the time we met them. I’m not sure what type they are. One is dark brown and just plain cute. The other is completely ginger with a bright red face that looks like an old man and a very red bum. We did some serious bonding that day – the ginger and me. He started looking through my hair for nits. It was really funny. When he couldn’t find any he decided to rub his fur a give me some of his. So sweet. I can officially say I was in love with a ginger that day.
I learnt something else too. The average butterfly only lives for 48 hours. That’s so sad. They take so long to become the beautiful creatures that they are only to be free and beautiful for just two days. It hardly seems fair. Although I guess the Buddhists would say it proves their point that nothing, no matter how beautiful is permanent.
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