Things to do
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Barrio de Belén
The southern quarter of Iquitos, built on the Itaya where the lower streets float on rafts and rise and fall with the river. Its market runs for several blocks and sells jungle produce found nowhere else in the country, including the medicine alley of Pasaje Paquito.
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Malecón Tarapacá
The riverfront promenade above the Itaya, lined with the tiled mansions the rubber barons built when Iquitos was one of the richest towns in South America. It is where the town gathers after dark, and the view runs out over the flooded forest beyond.
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Casa de Fierro
A two storey building of bolted iron sheets on the main square, designed in Gustave Eiffel's workshop, shown in Paris in 1889 and shipped in pieces up the Amazon by a rubber baron. It is the most quoted survival of the boom that built the town.
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Centro de Rescate Amazónico
A rehabilitation centre on the Nauta road that raises orphaned Amazonian manatees and returns them to the river, along with rescued otters and turtles. Visits are guided and short, and the animals are handled as patients rather than shown as an exhibit.
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Complejo turístico de Quistococha
A lake and park thirteen kilometres south of the town, with a sand beach on the black water and enclosures of Amazonian animals including paiche, the giant river fish. It is where families from Iquitos spend a Sunday rather than a wilderness trip.
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Museo de Culturas Indígenas Amazónicas
A museum on the malecón showing carvings, textiles and everyday objects from the indigenous cultures of the Amazon basin, arranged by nation so that each group's work is kept together. It is the one collection in town that treats those cultures as living, and an hour covers it before the heat of the afternoon.
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Reserva nacional Allpahuayo Mishana
A reserve of white sand forest on the Nauta road, an unusual soil that carries species found almost nowhere else, including several birds first described in the 1990s. It is close enough to the town to be walked in a morning, which no other protected forest here is.
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Reserva nacional Pacaya-Samiria
The largest protected area in Peru, more than two million hectares of seasonally flooded forest between the Marañón and the Ucayali. Trips run from Nauta rather than Iquitos and last several days, since the interior is reached only by boat and the water level decides the route.
