Iquitos - Day One

Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin.  Our family trip to Iquitos was one of my all-time favorites.  We traveled with the Sorenson family.  Our girls are best friends and spend countless hours together on a regular basis.   They entertained themselves with animal figures on the boat, at dinner and by the side of the pool.  They held hands running through the villages and bickered over who picked the most flowers.  They doubled up on the water slides to come down together and giggled when something fun happened.

Iquitos, a city of 500,00 people which is only accessible by boat or plane, is the largest city in the Amazon rainforest.  It is a short 1.5 hours flight from Lima.   We decided to take advantage of our stay in the jungle and add one extra night in the city itself.  We fed the kids sack lunches on the plane so that we could hit the ground running.  

The Mission President on the Lima North Mission was on the flight with us and called us two small mototaxis to take our families out to Puerto Nanay, where we caught a small boat recommended by the mototaxi driver out to the Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm.   There were monkeys, a caged jaguar and a tapir too, but aside from the boat ride into the tributaries of the Amazon, it was not what we thought that it would be.  The three-wheeled motorcycle taxis were a blast.  The kids were waving and yelling through the streets.  I wish that we had a photo of our family of 5 squished into a seat made for two. :)  

Known as Suri, this local dish is fried Bettle Larvae that we found readily available at Puerto Nanay.  

No thanks.

 Local fishman 

Our captain as we approached the Butterfly Farm.

Cute Kennedy.

The moon over our boat

Entrance

Macaws.  Hola. Hola. Hola.

 Not so awesome.

Vibrant Jungle Flowers

Mama and baby monkeys at the Butterfly Farm

Sweet Peyton

We found a hammock stuffed into the roof of the boat... of course we had to try it!  

Abe loved making baby Tanner smile. 

Baby Tanner

Our ride.

On our way home, we stopped at the highly recommended Yellow Rose of Texas for dinner.  With eccentric décor and a tiny staircase to the second floor, we weren’t sure what we were getting ourselves into, but the food was great. 

Okay, all political jokes aside... SERIOUSLY?