Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [417]
Here you’ll find a limited choice of generally good accommodations, as well as some decent food. You can also hire boats here – in fact, you’ll be nabbed as soon as you turn up by boat touts seeking to lure you to their vessel. Choose your boat carefully: make sure it has new-looking life jackets and enough petrol for the voyage, and pay at the end of the tour. Wildlife to watch out for includes freshwater pink dolphins, sloths and meter-long green iguanas, as well as exotic birds such as the curiously long-toed wattled jacana (which walks on lily pads) and the metallic-green Amazon kingfisher. If you like fishing, the dry season is apparently the best time.
Internet is available at three or four places, most near or on the main square up the hill.
Tours & Guides
Lots of peki-peki boat owners offer tours. Take your time in choosing; the first offer is unlikely to be the best. Guides are also available for walking trips into the surrounding forest, including some overnight hikes.
A recommended guide is Gilber Reategui Sangama (message 57-9018, 061-962-7607; junglesecrets@yahoo.com), who owns the boat La Normita in Yarinacocha. He has expedition supplies (sleeping pads, mosquito nets, drinking water) and is both knowledgeable and environmentally aware. He speaks some English, is safe and reliable, and will cook meals for you. He charges about S125 per person per day, or S25 per hour, with a minimum of two people, for an average of three to five days. Gilber lives at the lakeside village of Nueva Luz de Fátima, and offers tours to stay with his family: his father is a shaman with 50 years’ experience. Gilber works with Arcesio Morales and Roberto ‘Jungle Man’ Tamani, who don’t speak English. He also recommends his uncle and nephew, Nemecio and Daniel Sangama, with their boat El Rayito. Another good guide is Pedro Tello (961-94-5611), with his boat Tiburón.
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SHIPIBO TRIBESPEOPLE
The matriarchal Shipibo tribespeople live along the Río Ucayali and its tributaries in small loose villages of simple, thatched platform houses. Often visited settlements are San Francisco, at the northwest end of Yarinacocha and accessible by dirt road from Pucallpa, and the village of Santa Clara, accessible only by boat. San Francisco even has simple lodgings (about S10 per person).
Shipibo women craft delicate pots and textiles, decorated with highly distinctive, geometric designs. Shops in Puerto Callao and Yarinacocha sell these products but it is best to go the villages and look for crafts there. Around 40 Shipibo villages produce crafts; pieces are handmade so though patterns are similar, each one is unique. They range from inexpensive small pots and animal figurines to huge urns valued at hundreds of dollars (and more, internationally).
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Other guides, however, will claim the above are unavailable or no longer work there. Don’t believe all you hear: a good boat driver will float slowly along, so that you can look for birdlife at the water’s edge, or perezosos (sloths) in the trees. Sunset is a good time to be on the lake.
Boat trips to the Shipibo villages of either San Francisco (also now reached by road) or, better, Santa Clara (reached only by boat,) are also popular. For short trips, boat drivers charge S15 to S20 an hour for the boat; these can carry several people. Bargaining over the price is acceptable.
Sleeping & Eating
PUERTO CALLAO
La Maloka Ecolodge (59-6900; lamaloka@gmail.com; s/d S120/180; ) is the only decent place to stay in the port. It is worth forking out the extra cash for the comfort. La Maloka Ecolodge is located at the right-hand end of the waterfront, this lodge is built right out on the water, with the amply sized but unadorned rooms sitting on stilts over the lake. There is a relaxing outdoor restaurant and bar area overlooking the lake; pink dolphins regularly flash their flippers for guests. The only downside