Qualla: Iquitos

Iquitos: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LLs, CC BY-SA 4.0. Iquitos is the largest city on Earth that you cannot drive to. No road connects its 380,000 residents to the rest of Peru or the rest of South America. What arrives comes by river or by airplane, and the three-wheeled motorcycle taxis called motocars - or mototaxis, depending on who you ask - swarm the streets in numbers that locals stop trying to count. The Plaza de Armas sits a block from the river. At the right time of year, you can stand at the edge of the waterfront walk and watch the Amazon retreat eleven meters below where it had been the season before, exposing raw brown mud and the bones of last year's boats.

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Image: LLs | CC BY-SA 4.0

Iquitos: The Rubber Years

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maurice Chédel, CC BY 3.0. Iquitos had two great booms. The first, and the one the architecture remembers, was rubber. In the late nineteenth century, demand for rubber from Amazonian trees turned isolated Peruvian river ports into some of the wealthiest cities in South America. Money poured in. No expense...

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Image: Maurice Chédel | CC BY 3.0

Iquitos: The City That Runs on Motorcycles

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. Walk any street within the central district and two or three empty motocars will pass you in any given minute, the drivers making eye contact in hopes you want a ride. Most destinations cost around two and a half or three soles. A drive out to the Belen district might run three s...

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Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Iquitos: Ayahuasca and the Shamanism Economy

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Percy Meza, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the past two decades, Iquitos has become one of the world's primary destinations for ayahuasca tourism. The hallucinogenic brew - made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, often combined with the chacruna plant - has drawn visitors from Europe, North America, Australia, and inc...

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Image: Percy Meza | CC BY-SA 3.0

Iquitos: The Reserves That Make the Trip

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peje suizo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The city itself is interesting. The reserves around it are why most people come. The Allpahuayo-Mishana National Reserve holds endemic bird species found nowhere else on Earth, a consequence of its unusual white-sand soils. The Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve - the largest protec...

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Image: Peje suizo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Iquitos: Belen and the Markets

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M M from Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Belen is the poorest district in Iquitos, home to roughly 60,000 people living along the river in houses that rise on stilts during the flood and then sit in mud when the water recedes. The Belen market is extraordinary and dangerous. Tropical fruits, river fish, jungle medicines...

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Image: M M from Switzerland | CC BY-SA 2.0