The Amazon Basin

Peru's least-known region occupies some two-thirds of the country, an area the size of California. The selva (jungle) of the Amazon basin is watered by the world's second longest river and its tributaries. What eastern Peru lacks in human population it makes up for in sheer plant and animal numbers, more than you knew could exist, for the viewing. There are lodges, cruise boats, and guides for the growing number of people who arrive to see the spectacle.

The northern Amazon is anchored by the port city of Iquitos. Iquitos is the gateway to the world's largest and most diverse natural reserve, the Amazon rain forest. From Iquitos you can head for the jungle to explore the flora and fauna.

Though the area has been inhabited by small indigenous groups for more than 5,000 years, it wasn't "civilized" until Jesuit missionaries arrived in the 1500s. The Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana was the first white man to see the Amazon. He came upon the great river, which the indigenous people called Tunguragua (King of Waters), on his trip down the Río Napo in search of El Dorado. He dubbed it Amazonas after he met with extreme opposition from female warriors along the banks of the river.

The area was slow to convert to modern ways, and remained basically wild until the 1880s, when there was a great rubber boom. The boom changed the town of Iquitos overnight; rubber barons installed themselves in lavish palaces, and the city's population exploded. Local people were put to work as rubber tappers—at the time, rubber was a natural commodity that was hunted rather than farmed, and the tappers would head into the jungle and collect the sap from rubber trees. The boom went bust in the first part of the 20th century, when a British entrepreneur transported some seeds out of Brazil and began building plantations on the Malay Peninsula. You can still see remnants of the boom in the somewhat dilapidated palaces in Iquitos and along the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries, where Rivereños (the river people) eke their survival from the river and small plots of farmland.

Most of the indigenous tribes—many small tribes are in the region, the Boras, Yaguas, and Orejones being the most prevalent—have given up their traditional hunter-gatherer existence and now live in small communities along the backwaters of the great river. You will not see the remote tribes unless you travel far from Iquitos and deep into the jungle, a harrowing and dangerous undertaking. What you will see are people living along with nature, with traditions that date back thousands of years: a common sight might be a fisherman paddling calmly up the Amazon in his dugout canoe, angling to reel in something upriver.

The lesser-known southern Amazon region has to be satisfied with the big river's tributaries. Few travelers spend much time in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of Madre de Dios department, using the city instead as a jumping-off point to the Manu and Tambopata reserves. Manu is the less accessible but more pristine of the two Madre de Dios reserves, but Tambopata will not disappoint.

Be prepared to spend some extra soles to get here. Roads, when they exist, are rough-and-tumble, and often impassible during the November through April rainy season. Rivers also overflow at this time. A dry-season visit entails the least fuss. You'll most likely jet into Iquitos or Puerto Maldonado, respectively the northern and southern gateways to the Amazon. Each receives several daily flights from Lima. From each it's usually a boat ride to reach the region's famed lodges.

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