Iquitos, Peru

We arrived in Iquitos, Peru in the afternoon. Iquitos is the largest city in the world that can not be reached by road. At the dock we met a guy who offered to take us to a hostel. We got in the back of his taxi, which was just a motorbike with a carriage like thing attached in the back; it kinda resembled a motorized Chinese rickshaw. The hostel we stayed at wasn’t the best, but it had a pool and only cost us $20 for 2 nights! After checking in we headed toward the main square, Plaza de Armas. We found an internet café and food, life’s two main essentials. We ate at Ari’s Burgers, which was an American 50’s style restaurant. There was tons of different kinds of food, even milkshakes! As we were finishing our meal an old man and his son were trying to ask if they could have the rest of our food. They were motioning at us from the street, but we tried to ignore them. Finally the kid came in as we were leaving and asked for the leftovers. We said sure, and he put Katie’s pasta in a plastic bag. After dinner Leif made us get ice cream, and we saw the two eating our food from their plastic bag. We feel really sad about their situation, but we have become somewhat callous to beggars everywhere because we see them so much. We walked around the square and saw a pretty purple fountain, and then returned to our hostel.

The next day was pretty much the same as the first. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the town. In the afternoon we took advantage of the pool and went swimming for a bit. We went to bed early that night, as we had to wake up at 4:30am to catch our 7am flight to Quito, Ecuador.