3 Best Sights in The Amazon Basin, Peru

This small museum housed in a pale-blue building on the Malecón Tarapacá has an impressive collection of colorful headdresses made from the feathers of jungle birds and an array of other traditional handiwork by the main Amazonian tribes. If you're interested in indigenous cultures, you won't want to miss it. The displays include a wealth of information about the lives of the Amazon Basin's native peoples and an array of artifacts collected in Peru, Brazil, Colombia, and the Guianas over the course of decades. Items range from the quotidian (clothing, paddles, woven bags) to the ceremonial (musical instruments, headdresses, necklaces with the teeth of jungle animals). Among the more striking items are the jewelry, embroidered cloths and cushmas (tunics), painted ceramic wares, blow guns, spears, bows and arrows, and ceremonial headdresses.

This "museum" has a few faded paintings and "bronzed" fiberglass statues of local indigenous people. One room holds temporary exhibitions by local artists, sometimes indigenous painters. Although the exhibits are less than enthralling, it's worth popping into this former town hall, constructed in 1863, to admire the ornately carved hardwoods and courtyard garden.

The Ayapua, a 33-meter (108-foot) boat built in Hamburg, Germany, in 1906, navigated the Brazilian Amazon for much of the rubber boom and was brought to Iquitos by the nonprofit Fundamazonia in 2005 to be renovated and turned into a museum. It is now moored next to Plaza Ramón Castilla, on the Itaya River, and contains displays about the rubber boom and historic photos of the region from that era. The bridge has been refurbished, and there is a small bar where you can have a beer or soft drink.