Jenaro Herrera

I lived and worked in the village of Jenaro Herrera (see Umberto Pacaya) on the Ucayali River in Peru for three years in the 1980's. There were (usually) two boats a week from Iquitos to Jenaro Herrera.  You left Iquitos about 4:00 in the afternoon and arrived at 6:00 the following morning.  The boat continued on to Requena after stopping, and there were usually a lot of passengers onboard who were hungry and ready to buy some food for the remainder of the trip. The sound of the motor slowing down upon arrival to Jenaro always woke me up.  Sitting up in my hammock, this was the scene that welcomed me home.  [NOTE: I also got married in this village (thx, Elysa)].

Belén Market, Iquitos

The Belén market of Iquitos (see Real Big Fish) gets inundated every year during the floodpeak of the Amazon River.  The residents of this part of the city have come up with several different strategies for dealing with the annual flooding. They build their houses on stilts (see Danau Sentarum), or on pontoons (floating logs, actually), or they build two storey houses and simply move upstairs during the flood.  The last strategy requires shoveling out a lot of mud once the floodwaters recede. [NOTE: The image above was taken in the mid-1980's.  Since then, the Amazon River has changed course and no longer flows right in front of Iquitos.  The Belén market, however, still floods every year.  Now the floodwaters come from the Itaya River.]