Day 19: Ceiba Tops back to Iquitos

We had our last half-day at Ceiba Tops today. After a nice breakfast, we went on a tour of our guide's hometown (Abelardo, Indiana). 

Relative to the primitive village along the Amazon we visited yesterday (Yagua village), this was a "transitional" village along the Peruvian Amazon. Abelardo told us that Indiana was the second largest town in the Loreto region of Peru. (Pop. of approx. 400, 40 years ago; pop. of approx. 5,000 today.)

It was fascinating to walk along the side walks, which were used by mototaxis as well as pedestrians, and to see the mix of shanty housing and new schools and electricity and a few houses with televisions as well.

He took us into his high school and we spent some time with a class of 5th graders (kids in their final year of high school.) And then he took us by his parents house and we met his father. (In that conversation I made one of my bigger conversation faux pas: Eleanor chastised me afterwards for smiling and nodding along when, after I'd asked about how many children he had, Abelardo's father told us that one of his daughters had died. I felt pretty terrible about that...)

After leaving the luxury of Ceiba Tops, we took a boat back to Iquitos, and saw Charlie, our Spanish-speaking guide from a from a few days ago. It was like we had a local friend!

Once we settled into our room, I dropped our clothes at a lavanderia down the street, which will hopefully (🙏🏽) have them all washed before we have to catch our flight back to Lima tomorrow morning. (I had quite a time trying to negotiate the pickup time!)

After that, we walked down to the malecon, popped into a cultural museum, got a rapid-fire guided tour of the museum by an enthusiastic guide named Jorge (his colleague called him "George Bush,") along with the only American tourist we've met so far (Joey, from upstate New York). 

Then we wandered further down the malecon (boardwalk) until it ended, got a little accosted by a short, barefooted, talkative (fast Spanish, por supuesto) fella with orange nail polish, who made us all feel rather uncomfortable. It was getting to be dusk, and there was a another guy setting up a slackline to walk maybe 10 yards across a double staircase in a park, about 20' in the air.

We were all a bit disappointed to not get to watch him, but we were sketched out by orange fingernail guy, kids in the park were starting to smoke some pot, and we were a bit lost in trying to find the port where we needed to be to catch a boat to where we were heading for dinner.

We walked further along some busy streets, and even walked through a few "barber shops" (people getting their hair cut in very tight quarters along the side walk). 

We eventually asked for help with directions from a woman coming out of her home and made it to our destination (but not without some stressful "conversations" on the street, first).

Anyway, it was a big day.

Finally, we had a fancyish dinner at a restaurant out on the river (not the Amazon, technically, but some tributary I don't know the name of). The restaurant had a pool. Afterward, we enjoyed probably our last mototaxi ride for a while back to our hotel.

Tomorrow will likely be our hardest travel day.

We have to:

- eat breakfast

- pick up laundry

- get busride to airport

- fly to Lima

- kill 7 hours in the city with all our luggage

- get an hour+ taxi ride from the airport to the bus station

- take an overnight bus from Lima to Huaraz (9:30pm -  6:30am),

- then, finally, catch another taxi from Huaraz to our last destination (Lazy Dog Inn)

Wish us luck!!