Belén
"Within twenty meters of the market entrance I had lost all orientation — and I stopped trying to recover it."
Belén sits at the southern edge of Iquitos where the city meets the river and the distinction between the two becomes genuinely unclear. In the high-water months, the entire lower neighborhood floats — houses built on balsa rafts rise and fall with the water level, connected by walkways that flex underfoot like living things. During the dry season, the same structures stand on stilts above the sucking mud, and the market that runs along the waterfront becomes one of the most extraordinary food markets I have ever found myself inside. I arrived on a Tuesday morning when the vendors were still setting up, and within twenty meters I had lost all orientation. I stopped trying to recover it.
The smell was of river water and charcoal and something fermented and green. Women in rubber boots moved between stalls with the efficient focus of professionals who were not there to be observed. Live turtles in wire cages. Dried piranhas arranged by size, their teeth still locked in the rictus of the drying process. Bundles of ayahuasca vine next to bottles of sangre de grado and cat’s claw bark and a dozen other plants I had no names for. A man was selling crocodile fat from a jar, recommending it for joint pain with the practiced calm of a pharmacist. Another had paiche fillets the size of surfboards, the flesh a dense white that took the charcoal grill smoke and turned it into something edible.
The food stalls in the market’s interior served breakfast and lunch on low plastic tables pushed together in the narrow passages. I ate juane — chicken and rice wrapped in bijao leaves, steamed until the leaf fragrance penetrates the rice — and then tacacho con cecina, plantain fritters pounded and fried with cured pork that came off the smoke dark and rich. The cook watched me eat with the polite curiosity of someone who rarely sees a visitor actually sit down at her table. I went back four mornings in a row, and on the fourth morning she had already put the tacacho on when she saw me coming through the entrance.
The floating section of Belén, accessed by a short boat ride from the market bank, is best seen at high water when the neighborhood is fully afloat. Children paddle themselves to school in canoes. Doorsteps open directly onto river water. A television visible through a window plays the same telenovela that plays on the mainland, the antenna rigged to a pole above the roofline. There is nothing quaint about it — this is how people have lived here for generations, and the pragmatism is complete and unhurried. You arrive on a boat and you leave on a boat and in between you try not to look like someone who finds this remarkable.
When to go: Any time, but the market is at its most intense on weekday mornings before ten. Arrive on foot from the Plaza de Armas — the fifteen-minute walk along the riverfront sets the approach properly. Don’t hire a guide; walk in, follow your nose, and buy something before asking any questions.