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The jungle-locked city of Iquitos can only be reached by boat or plane and, as the Amazon swells, becomes a jumping-off point for forays into the rainforest. Francis Pearce explores its food and its future

Where TheWIld ThIngs Are

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT POGSON

gourmet traveller

food & travel 81

The jungle-locked city of Iquitos can only be reached by boat or plane and, as the Amazon swells, becomes a jumping-off point for forays into the rainforest. Francis Pearce explores its food and its future

Where TheWIld ThIngs Are

Currency is the Peru Nuevos Soles (£1=PEN4.68). Iquitos is five hours behind GMT. The climate is warm and humid but, despite an average temperature of 26°C, it can rain suddenly and frequently. There is, on average, 54cm of precipitation in February and March with humidity at around 85%. The average daily temperature in February/March is 27°C.

GettinG thereIquitos is one of the most populated cities in the world that cannot be reached by road, its airport is about 7kms from the town centre with flights to Lima departing four times a day (flight time is one-hour 45-minutes). Moto-taxis (£1.50) or a standard taxi (£3) are available from the airport to the centre of town.

Flightsiberia (0870 609 0500; iberia.com) flies daily to Lima from Heathrow, via Madrid. You can then take a connecting flight with lAN Airlines (0800 977 6100; lan.com) from Lima to Iquitos. tAM Airlines (020 8897 0005; tam.com.br). The Brazilian airline offers flights from Heathrow via São Paulo to Lima, where you can then take a connecting flight to Iquitos.

BoAtThe town can also be reached by boat from Pucallpa (4-7 days) or Yurimaguas (3-6 days). Boats leave Iquitos from Puerto Masusa, on Avenue La Marina 3kms north of the town centre. Ask the captain or see chalkboards at the pier for estimated departure times as boats can often leave late. Boats depart about three times a week to Pucallpa or more frequently to Yurimaguas. The journey costs around £15. You can also take boats from here to the Peruvian border with Brazil and Colombia roughly twice a week, the journey takes two days.

resourcesPromPeru (peru.info). This should be your first stop for information on visiting Peru, including visas, local history, tourist maps and suggested itineraries. iPeru main hall at the airport and Calle Napo 232, Plaza de Armas, Iquitos. These information centres have free maps and the friendly English-speaking staff can help you select the most reliable guide for jungle tours.

Further reADinGPeru guidebooks from both Lonely Planet (£14.99) and National Geographic Traveler (£14.99) are comprehensive introductions to the country with sections on Iquitos and the Amazon, and suggestions for where to eat, sleep and recommended tours.trail of Feathers: in search of the Birdmen of Peru by Tahir Shah (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £10). Well-researched and entertaining, the book is a colourful exploration of the rich mythical and shamanistic history of the Amazon basin.

food & traveL

Pink dolphins and walking catfish swim among the trees. The Amazon is rising early and may fall again but at its peak in May, the river will have gained 15 metres or so, drowning four-fifths

of the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in the Loreto Province. In the Barrio de Belén, wooden houses rise on balsa rafts secured to poles and the painted concrete shops open for business one floor up as the streets flood to head-height and water laps at the main square and its candy-coloured bandstand. This is the edge of Iquitos, a port 3,000kms upriver from the sea, in a Pacific country where ships steam up from the Atlantic and rafts ride the current. Save for its metalled link to Nauta 100kms south, Iquitos is one of the most populated cities in the world that cannot be reached by road. In the centre, the moto-taxi is the main form of transport: a Thai tuk-tuk hauled by a straining 125cc Chinese motorbike and capable of carrying a driver plus two or three passengers and a load.

Iquitos’s outskirts gradually transform from lush greenery to a sprawl of low houses and businesses with hand-painted signs, which then morph into grander streets where the buildings speak of colonial links to Europe. The Plaza de Armas, the main square, houses the city’s smartest hotel as well as the main church, the Iglesia Matriz, and Gustave Eiffel’s Casa de Fierro, or Iron House, a kit job of steel parts that were shipped to Iquitos after the 1889 Paris Exhibition. Each Sunday morning, come torrential rain or hazy sunshine, the square is rimmed by soldiers, sailors, veterans and junior firefighters, saluting the flag. In the evening the Malecón Tarapacá, or riverside boulevard, a street away is alive with children hawking T-shirts and jungle jewellery while Capoeira martial arts dancers arc and whirl to music from boom boxes that bounces off the walls of former mansions and carries down to palm-roofed houses on stilts below. The Malecón now overlooks the Itaya River; the fast-flowing Amazon moved away just a few years ago. The precise place at which they join is clearly visible from the air, liquorice on one side of the interface, caramel on the other; one side slow-moving and acidic, the other a fast-flowing colloid of sediment and water.

We land at the small airport where the carcasses of two passenger jets rot unnervingly at the end of the runway and military helicopters sit on the tarmac. Iquitos is not only a port with its own

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Where to stayAqua Expeditions (00 511 368 3868; aquaexpeditions.com).Explore the region by boat; the 12 large suites all have full-height panoramic windows. The crew includes English-speaking naturalists and the menu uses rainforest ingredients. The boat has its own water and waste treatment systems to limit environmental impact. Three-night itinerary from £1,300 or seven-nights from £3,030, including excursions and meals but not flights to Iquitos.Amazon River Expeditions (00 51 65 421 9195). Offers cruises down the Amazon and jungle tours, including a three-day itinerary with guided walks, night-time cruises, fishing and bird watching. Accommodation is in the Heliconia Amazon River Lodge. La Casa Fitzcarraldo Avenida La Marina 2153, Iquitos (00 51 65 601 138; lacasafitzcarraldo.com). Offers peace and quiet among trees and tree houses, plus a swimming pool. Rooms or bungalows from £40 per night. El Dorado Plaza Hotel Calle Napo 252, Plaza de Armas, Iquitos (00 51 65 222 555; eldoradoplazahotel.com). Great location close to the city centre and the Amazon. From £150 for two nights. Victoria Regia Hotel & Suites Ricardo Palma 252, Iquitos (00 51 65 231 983; victoriaregiahotel.com). Simple but good value accommodation with a pool. From £40 per night.

shipyard but also a garrison town, in which the army has sequestered many of the historic buildings. At the start of the 20th century, British, American and German rubber barons used private armies and forced, native labour to make more money than they knew what to do with, building their grand houses on the Malecón.

In the 1970s, oil brought mixed blessings. Now, in a less marked way, it is tourism and Peru’s culinary revolution that bring money to the region, and there may be more wealth to come if the rainforest can be exploited without destroying it. One of the indigenous tribes that suffered disaster at the hands of the rubber barons, the Bora, is now teaching Peruvian scientists the secrets of agroforestry, growing food and medicines in the rainforest, at a time when forest ingredients are adding to the already remarkable breadth and diversity of Peruvian cuisine.

Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, celebrity chef and owner of the restaurant Malabar in Lima, spent a year in Iquitos researching rainforest recipes and ingredients, and has since designed the menu on the Aqua, a luxurious floating hotel that enables the well-heeled amateur naturalist to venture upriver and foray into the two million-hectare reserve. One of Schiaffino’s culinary inventions, carachama caviar, is made with the eggs of the walking catfish, Brazil nut cheese and breadfruit blinis. In the Amazon, carachama, with a head like a scout car and an armoured body, are plentiful in the low season and are commonly used to make fish broth. Its brain is fed to small children in the belief that it will help them talk and its bones are a rare source of calcium in an area where people eat few vegetables and no dairy products. Its opalescent orange eggs hatch in burrows along the riverbank and the fish crawl over mud and into the water using their pectoral fins. Kingfishers have been known to take over the burrows and rear their families in them, too.

We take a skiff upriver spotting squirrel monkeys streaming through the trees, about 40 of them in addition to howlers, tiny tamarinds, rare scarlet macaws, a three-toed sloth – soporific, resting in the elbow of a tree – and a harpy eagle in striking distance but seemingly oblivious to its prey. At a temporary campsite in a clearing by the Dorado-Warmi River we meet 55-year-old José from Genaro Herrara, a day’s row away. Skin tanned and leathery, barefoot and wearing an old soccer shirt he is chest-high to a tall European and half the weight, but all muscle and sinew. Four poles thrust into the leafy ground denote a sleeping area. There’s a fire with two pans suspended over it, yuca in one, carachama in the other. He and his companion, who is foraging, will bring home fresh and salted fish.

Our guide, Daniel Vasquez Flores, grew up in Islandia on the Huallaga River, a community of about 150 people, now a town of 15,000. He ate mainly rice in the low season, supplemented by breadfruit (not native but introduced during the rubber boom) and yuca. Green caterpillars and leafcutter ants, raw or fried, were a seasonal treat. ‘My grandmother loved to eat electric eel,’ he recalls, although she may have acquired the taste in later life: forest lore prohibits a pregnant woman from eating either electric eel or stingray. The fatty fish, trapped using nets, are wrapped in maranta leaves that had been held over a fire so that the oil in them plasticizes. That way the nutritious cooking juices are locked in.

When the forest floods, peccary, capybara or deer may all find their way into the pot but when the waters are low it is easier to

beloW: achiote, the seeds of the annotto tree are eaten and used

as a vibrant face paint. opposite, from top to bottom: bora chief;

fishing on the black Waters; steaming fish and pounding rice

in preparation for a rainforest feast; sharp-toothed piranha;

spotting exotic Wildlife along the riverbank; house at hatum poza

We head upriver spotting monkeys streaming through the trees. at the campsite, fragrant pans of yuca and carachama are suspended over a fire

some of the indigenous tribes are now teaching peruvian scientists the secrets of agroforestry – growing food and medicines in the rainforest

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left: sunset over the amazon. opposite, clockwise from top left: amazonica beer; armoured carachama fish; steamed fish with tomato; a touch of spice, vibrant chillies; catch of the day at the food market; travelling down the amazon; hand-crafted textiles; exploring iquitos by moto-taxi; dinner is served at the temporary camp

catch fish, many of which are migratory – the sea-dwelling dorado, or dolphin fish, the drum fish, bass and skate make their way hundreds of kilometres into the ‘sweet water’. Doraderos, or dorado fishers, can earn good money. Weighing up to 40kg, the prized fish sells for 20 soles (£4.50) a kilogram. And there are other big fish, too. The paiché or arapaima is the largest freshwater fish and can be up to 2.5 metres long and weigh 100kg; the biggest recorded was 200kg.

‘We caught a stingray once. Weighed about 140kg. My grandfather, my father and his two sons weren’t strong enough and we had to call for help but we caught it,’ says Flores. ‘My father’s 68 and he still fishes in the black water. There is always fish in my mother’s house.’

At Hatum Poza (meaning big lake), on the Puinahua River, Wilda, one of the tiny community of 15 people who live there, uproots yuca. The smell of coriander is in the air and a cayman (an aquatic reptile similar to an alligator), divided between the six families, is being prepared for the pot. The village grows rice during the low season and

The Amazon Café corner of Putumayo and Próspero Streets, Iquitos. Housed in Gustave Eiffel’s impressive Iron House the upstairs balcony offers great views of the Plaza de Armas. It’s hot and noisy but worth it, especially for a cold beer and very reasonable, generous portions of food. From £2 per head.Chez Maggy Los Maderos Raymondi 218, Iquitos (00 51 65 232 731). Deservedly popular with locals the restaurant prepares its dishes over hot coals on a parilla (grill). Try the tacacho (roast bananas, pork and chopped onions). From £2 per head, local beers cost £1. El Meson Malecón Maldonado 153, Iquitos (00 51 65 231 857; restaurantelmeson.com). Good mixture of forest dishes and criollo food, with views of the Itaya River from the Malecón. Two courses, including caymen chicharrones (scratchings) with yuca and local beer for two costs around £12.Fitzcarraldo Malecón Tarapacá, Iquitos (00 51 65 243 434). Situated in an open-air house this convivial place overlooks the Itaya River. Serving a mixture of local dishes using rainforest ingredients and international fare (think pizza and hamburgers) it is certainly one

where to eatof the city’s better restaurants. Try the cecina (smoked pork) and a chonta (palm heart) salad with avocado and tomato, or one of the tasty fish dishes. From £5 per head. Heladerias (ice cream shops). If you are feeling the heat, head to La Favorita on Próspero Street or Shambo (on the corner of Próspero and Morona Streets). Las Jugueras (on the corner of 9 Diciembre and Próspero Street) opens at sunrise and sells a selection of delicious fruit juices for 40p. It is easy to spot due to the row of blenders on the counter.

don’t missHire a water taxi to Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm and the Amazon Animal Orphanage at Padre Cocha (00 51 63 232 665; amazonanimalorphanage.org). Only supported by visitors’ donations (£3 per person is the recommended contribution) this is not a private zoo but a refuge for rare animals including jaguar, anteaters and manatee. Extend your excursion to visit local tribal villages, including the Bora and Yagua Indian communities. The water taxi to Padre Cocha costs roughly £2.

catch fish in the big lake but need to preserve food when the river rises. A crop of bananas that takes nine months to grow will fetch about £45 from a rematista or middleman at Belén. Wilda will take it down there on a balsa raft, drifting for about a week, and when the deal is done he will break the raft up and sell that too, returning on a crowded ferry with cash, kerosene and salt. ‘Life is easy here,’ he says, ‘we have everything.’

In Belén, black vultures congregate on the roofs of a network of floating houses linked by logs and boards, where the rafts unload and boats selling food for the journey draw up next to the ferries. Cargo from the forest is carried up stone steps to the Mercado de Belén, which covers street upon cacophonous street with stalls pressed close together and heavy with meat, fish and fruit. I try a puff of a handmade cigarette, rolled, wrapped and bound in bundles at one of the stalls, and take a sip of masato, the slightly sour, cloudy beer made by chewing and spitting out yuca and leaving it to ferment.

in the rainforest, caterpillars with vivid markings and leafcutter ants are a seasonal treat and, when the river is low, the locals catch migratory fish

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We visit the Pasaje Paquito, or medicine street, where aphrodisiacs and elixirs are on sale. Then we sample juanes, balls of rice, chicken, olives and egg tied up in a ball of maranta leaves to represent the head of John the Baptist, and inchicapi, a soup made with peanuts, coriander and yuca and flavoured with chicken, its feet, liver and gizzards tied and used like a meaty bouquet garni.

Jorge Peña, a Cocamos Indian who works at the Amazon Museum, acts as our unofficial guide for the day. We take a moto-taxi to the Punchana district at the opposite end of Iquitos to hire a penque-penque, a covered motorboat. Sailing past shipyards we set out to see Gudrun Sperrer, an accidental benefactor who has rescued animals including a jaguar and a manatee. She now looks after them at the Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm. From there we are able to visit Bora and Yagua Indian communities. Yagua chief Cesar Cahuachi greets us with a hearty cheer and daubs our faces with powder from the achiote, a red fruit high in carotene that acts as a natural insect repellent. Like the curare used on the tips of the blow pipe darts with which he still hunts, its use is the product of generations of knowledge, although there are thought to be a vast number of discoveries yet to be revealed by the mighty Amazon.

While they may be combined in fusion dishes or cooked in altogether new ways, many of these rainforest ingredients are becoming familiar to gourmets beyond the forest. Chonta, shredded palm heart, and camarones, the sweet freshwater crayfish, are already served in Lima’s restaurants, where air transport now makes it possible to serve fresh paiché ceviche. Fruits from the Amazon such as the lúcuma (eggfruit), used to make the deliciously sweet dessert of suspiro or blended with Pisco as a cocktail, is already known in San Francisco and Miami. And the red camu camu berries, loaded with a megadose of Vitamin C, are in great demand throughout Japan, although too sour to be eaten on their own in the rainforest itself.

Individually we have made our own discoveries: catching sight of the rare scarlet macaw and the huge Blue Morph butterfly; witnessing a fishing bat hunt by radar; finding a gargantuan Victoria Regia water lily in bloom; picking wild coriander and glimpsing a way of life markedly different from our own. No doubt there are many more exciting finds to be unearthed in this captivating watery wonderland.

Francis Pearce and Robert Pogson explored Iquitos and the Amazon courtesy of Aqua Expeditions (00 511 368 3868; aquaexpeditions.com) and stayed at the Victoria Regia Hotel & Suites (00 51 65 231 983; victoriaregiahotel.com).

food glossary

wooden houses rise on balsa rafts secured to poles and shops open for business one floor up as the streets

flood and the water laps at the main square and colourful buildings

left: taking a crop of bananas to a trader in belen; rainforest ingredients are brought to market. opposite, clockwise from top left: school being repaired; fisherman at hatum poza; an elegant reminder of the ‘rubber boom’ era; child in one of the palm-roofed houses that line the river; bejewelled river bird; floating homes at belen; streets of iquitos; navigating the waters

Breadfruit a wholesome, starchy food. It is eaten fresh, boiled, roasted, fried or ground up and made into bread. Camarones a small freshwater crayfish. It is often used in chupe de camarones, a creamy chowder-style dish.Carachama freshwater catfish. The flesh is firm, low in fat and mild in flavour. They can be fried, poached, steamed, baked or grilled.Caterpillars and leafcutter ants are considered a delicacy in some South American communities. Caterpillars are high in protein, while roasted ant abdomens make a common snack.Chonta is a palm that thrives in the Amazon, the heart is shredded and used in salads. It is also dubbed ‘jungle spaghetti’. Dorado (or dolphin fish) a warm seawater fish, it is moderately fatty with very tender flesh. Best served poached, baked, fried or grilled.Drum fish any member of a large and diverse family of fish, so called for the drumming noises they make using their air bladders. Inchicapi a soup made with peanuts, coriander and yuca.Juanes balls of rice, chicken, olives and egg tied in maranta leaves.Lúcuma (also known as eggfruit) is a native Peruvian sweet fruit used to make the dessert suspiro. Maranta leaves tropical plant also known as arrowroot with spotted leaves and flowers. Paiché or arapaima is a tropical fish found in South America. It is one of the world’s largest freshwater fish.Peccary is a small stocky mammal that bears a strong resemblance to a wild pig. It is not, however, a pig. Yuca (also known as cassava) is a tropical root plant with tough, brown skin that, when peeled, reveals crisp, white flesh. Native to South America it is a major source of carbohydrate. It can be eaten grated and boiled, the leaves are also edible or used for food wrapping. The juice can also be fermented to make beer.

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