IQUITOS

Peru's Atlantic seaport

Situated just below the point where the Ucayali and Marañon joint to become the Amazon,- the sea river- Iquitos was, a century ago, a garrison village. Today it is a metropolis of 300,000 inhabitants. Ocean liners steam 2,300 miles up the Amazon to dock regularly at Peru's tropical gateway city and door to the mysterious Amazon.   It pulses with the raw energy of a frontier outpost. Flying in, you will be overhelmed as the seemingly limitless expanse of unexplored green unrolls beneath you. About 3 Kilometers wide near the city, the powerful Amazon courses by modern naval yard and petroleum installations, to pass native -Machiguengas- settlements clustered on its banks further downstream.  The monstrous river headstreams form in the Peruvian Andes. The narrowness course of the river is 3 kms. wide and goes to 240 kms. wide at the coast. It carries nearly 20% of the Earth's total water discharge to the ocean, more than the eight next largest rivers on earth combined. The flow - eighty times greater than the Nile - is so powerful that it perceptibly dilutes the ocean salted water of the Atlantic in sweet water 160 kms. beyond the coast line.

In the clearing of the Machiguengua -native - village, children come running, every time they see tourists. Forest Indians traditionally shy from contact with outsiders, but missionaires have won the trust of these villagers with patience and understanding. Most of the primitive Machiguengas has been baptized and have taken spanish names, like this young native dancer - Yolanda -, playing for the tourists. The Jungle is a benevolent wilderness with countless species of plant and animal life, that are still unclassified by modern science. The many Indian Tribes of the Amazon are perfectly adapted to their environment . Their folklore is some of the world's most fascinating and their folk medicine some of the most effective.

 From all jungle life, the species most endangered by man, is man himself:  The forest Indian.  His numbers were never great, three million, perhaps, when the Europeans arrived. Today a few thousand survive, while most of mankind multiplies. Of 330 tribes known in 1900,  97 have become extinct, and only 33 can still be classified as isolated.

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