Belen and the floating village of Iquitos

Belen is the name of the colorful and exotic market in the Amazon Basin, Iquitos, Peru surrounded by slums and a crazy floating village full of surprises. They said its dangerous so watch your stuff, keep your camera tied to your arm and prepare yourself for illegal dead animals from the jungle. :) If you want to visit the slum and the challenging life the people live here, pay a few Soles for a "local guide" and a boat. 

I was glad that at that point I had help with my bad Spanish. Well, I went with my Polish couchsurfing host Kamil who lives in Iquitos. Here you have to know Spanish to go around. The floating village of Belen is slum swimming on floating tree trunks. Some families have two yearly worries, to get enough food and to buy enough floating tree trunks to replace the rotten one.

Only few months in the dry season the water leaves and people play soccer, walk, hang around and the houses settle in the mud. 

Our local guide.

Almost all houses have electricity and they have public lighting as well. :)

A toilet. :)

Everything is interconnected with the rivers forming the Amazon. 

Our guide took us to his house and introduced us to his family.

In this humble home he has a bed where everybody sleeps..

A closet with everything he has..

Two daughters and a wife.

Chicken on a small plank above the water.

A dog and a cat.

They have a disco too. It's called Climax and loads of people gather in the evening and dance. Its apparently dangerous to go alone but they say it's fun cause the more people the more the disco sinks. So you dance in piranha (they are not so dangerous as everybody thinks) water till your knees. :) 

This is the worlds largest rodent. It's called capybara and it can be really big. :)

Huge lotus are growing on this waters.

Vultures are everywhere.

This is actually a really nice hostel in Iquitos where I had a lot of fun.

It's impressive how the people are used to live like this. Cause the houses don't float all the time. The sink sometimes, they get wet, they fall apart. So, I have lot of respect and admiration.

Aaaaah, one last thing about Iquitos and the region.. This is my favourite jugo called Aguajina and its awesome but I don't know the fruit.. :)