What to see in Iquitos.-
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BELEN.- At the southeast end of town is the floating shantytown of Belén, consisting of scores of huts, built on rafts, which rise and fall with the river. During the low-water months, these rafts sit on the river mud and are dirty and unhealthy, but for most of the year they float on the river − a colorful and exotic sight. Seven thousand people live here, and canoes float from hut to hut selling and trading jungle produce.
The best time to visit the shantytown is at 7am, when people from the jungle villages arrive to sell their produce. To get here, take a cab to ‘Los Chinos,’ walk to the port and rent a canoe to take you around.

The market here, located within the city blocks in front of Belén, is the raucous, crowded affair common to most Peruvian towns. All kinds of strange and exotic products are sold among the more mundane bags of rice, sugar, flour and cheap household goods. Look for the bark of the chuchuhuasi tree, which is soaked in rum for weeks and used as a tonic (it’s served in many of the local bars). Chuchuhuasi and other Amazon plants are common ingredients in herbal pain-reducing and arthritis formulas manufactured in Europe and the USA. The market makes for exciting shopping and sightseeing, but do remember to watch your wallet.
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HISTORICAL SHIPS MUSEUM.- Moored below Plaza Castilla is the diverting new Historical Ships Museum, on a 1906 Amazon riverboat, the gorgeously restored three-deck Ayapua . The exhibitions reflect the Amazon River's hodgepodge past: explorers, tribes, rubber barons and the filming of the 1982 Herzog movie Fitzcarraldo . Included in the entrance price is a half-hour historic boat ride on the river (Río Itaya out to the Río Amazonas proper).
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La casa de fierro.- Every guidebook mentions the ‘majestic’ Casa de Fierro (Iron House), designed by Gustave Eiffel (Eiffel Tower architect). It was made in Paris in 1860 and imported piece by piece into Iquitos around 1890, during the opulent rubber-boom days, to beautify the city. It’s the only survivor of three different iron houses originally imported here. It resembles a bunch of scrap-metal sheets bolted together, was once the location of the Iquitos Club and is now, in humbler times, a general store.
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The MUSEUM of INDIGENOUS AMAZON CULTURES.-
This new and intuitively presented museum takes you on a romp through the traits, traditions and beliefs of the tribes of the Amazon Basin, with a focus on the Peruvian Amazon. Some 40 Amazonian cultures are represented.
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Leticia is downstream on the Amazon river to the east near the tri-border between Peru, Colombia and Brazil. On this route you may stop in Pevas (there is a remarkable Art Gallery here), San Pablo (this is the place where the famous "Che" Guevara stayed as a volunteer) and Caballococha (a town surrounded by beautiful lagoons and plenty of pink and grey river dolphins). Rapido boats leave Tuesday-Sunday at 6am for S/. 200 (about 9hours), while slower lanchas leave Monday-Saturday (S/. 100).