from: Dilwyn Jenkins: The
rough guide to Peru; Rough Guides, New York, London,
Delhi; 6th edition September 2006; www.roughguides.com
History of Pucallpa: Rubber
boom - Cashibo natives are driven away by settlers - port
of La Hoyada - oil contracts since 1996 under Fujimori
Long an impenetrable refuge for Cashibo Indians, PUCALLPA
was developed as a camp for rubber gatherers at the
beginning of the twentieth century. In 1930 it was connected
to Lima by road (850km of it), and since then its expansion
has been intense and unstoppable. Sawmills surround the city
and spread up the main highway towards Tingo María and the
mountains, and an impressive floating harbour has been
constructed at the new port of
La Hoyada. Until 1980 it was a province in
the vast Loreto department, controlled from Iquitos, but
months of industrial action eventually led to the creation
of a separate department - Ucayali.
The end of financial restrictions from Iquitos, which
exports down the Amazon to the Atlantic, and the turn of
traffic towards the Pacific were significant changes. The
new floating dock can service cargo boats of up to 3000
tons, and in 1996, the selling off of contracts for oil
exploitation to foreign companies by Fujimori's government
gave Pucallpa a further burst of energy and finance (though
this particular effect has eased off in recent years) [...]
If you stay a while, though, it's difficult not to
appreciate Pucallpa's relaxed feel - or the entrepreneurial
optimism in a city whose red-mud-splattered streets are fast
giving way to concrete and asphalt (p.536).
Arrival by bus
From Lima, Pucallpa is served by several buss companies, all
of which go via Huánuco (roughly the halfway point); the
full journey is supposed to take approximately 24 hours but
can take longer; note that it's often difficult to get seats
on the buses if you pick them up outside of Lima (p.536).
Buses from Lima to Pucallpa are going daily and need 14
hours, or 24 hours via Huánuco (p.568).
If you arrive with Tepsa from Lima (p.536),
Ticket office at Jirón Lampa
1237, Lima Centro, Lima, T. 4275642
Bus terminal at Avenida Paseo de la República 129
[motorway], T. 4275643 or 4271233 (p.122)
you'll get off [in Pucallpa] outside their offices at Jirón
(p.536) Raymondi 649; Ucayali Express offices [in Pucallpa]
are by the corner of 7 de Junio with San Martín; while if
you travel with León de Huánuco, you disembark close to the
Parque San Martín, at the corner of Jirón 9 de Diciembre and
Jirón Vargas (p.537).
Arrival by boat
Boats arrive at the floating port of La Hoyada on the
eastern side of town, about 2km from the Plaza de Armas ($1
by motokar, $2.50 by taxi) (p.537).
Arrival by airplane
Pucallpa airport (T. 061-572767) is only 5km west of town
and is served by buses (20min; 35cents), motokars (15min;
$1.50) and taxis (10min; $4-5). [The airlines] Aero
Continente and Lan Peru operate flights between Pucallpa and
Lima and Iquitos, and TANS fly here from Tarapoto, Lima and
Iquitos once a week. There are also irregular services run
by Air Taxis (T. 061-575221), based at the airport, from
Cruzeiro do Sul just over the Brazilian border (p.539).
Flights
-- from Pucallpa to Lima are 5 weekly, a flight of 1 hour 30
min.
-- from Pucallpa to Tarapoto is daily, a flight of 1 hour
(p.568).
Tourist information in
Pucallpa
--
regional office
on block 2 of Raimondi (T./Fax 061-571506,
www.regionucayali.gob.pe)
--
Laser Viajes y Turismo,
Avenida 7 de Junio 1043, T./Fax 061-573776 (p.537).
Accommodation in Pucallpa
|
Map of the town of
Pucallpa with tourist hotels and tourist
information
Hotels (squares):
1. Barbtur
2. Mercedes
3. Sol de Oriente
4. Hostal Antonio
5. Hostal Arequipa
6. Hostal Komby
7. Hostal Sun
8. Sol del Oriente
Restaurants (points):
1. Jugos [juices] Don José
|
Hotel El Pescador ["The Fisherman"], no telephone
offers good if basic accommodation, offers off-season deals
in the range.
Hostal Los Delphines ["The Dolphines"], T. 061-571129
offers good if basic accommodation, offers off-season deals
in the range (p.539).
Addition: Hotels in
Pucallpa according to Trotamundos (in Spanish)
Hotels in Pucallpa (Trotamundos), p. 208-209
Camping
You can also camp anywhere along the lake [Yarinacocha,
9km], though bear in mind that you'll need to keep a lookout
for thieves (p.539).
Exchange
-- Exchange: Banco de Credito, Calle Tarapaca, two blocks
from the Plaza de Armas towards the main market by Parque
San Martín
-- cambistas [money changer] on Calle Tarapaca, where
it meets the Plaza de Armas, for good rates on dollars cash
(p.537).
Post office
[Jirón] San Martín 418 (8am-7pm Mon-Sat) (p.537).
Phone and Internet in
Pucallpa
Payphones: Telefónica del Peru, [Jirón] Ucayali 357 or Jirón
Independencia
Internet: There are several internet cafés but the best is
probably the ISTU, Avenida San Martín 383 ($2.50 per hour,
itsu@pol.com.pe) (p.537).
Transport in Pucallpa
One of the best ways of getting around Pucallpa is as the
locals do, by motorbike; these can be rented by the hour
(about $2) from the workshop at [Jirón] Raymondi 654.
Otherwise, colectivos leave from near the food marker on
Avenida 7 de Junio, while motokars ant taxis can be picked
up almost anywhere in town (p.537).
Eating in Pucallpa
Like all jungle cities, Pucallpa has developed a cuisine of
its own;one of the unique dishes you can find in some of
these restaurants in
inchicapi
- a chicken soup made with peanuts, manioc and coriander
leaves (p.538).
Restaurants are fairly plentiful.
Chifa Han Muy
Jirón Inmaculada
247
wonderful blend of Peruvian Chinese and tropical jungle
cuisine
Hostal Inambu
[Jirón] Federico Basadre 271
for steak or chicken dishes, best quality
Restaurant El Golf
Jirón Huascar 545
excellent fish dishes, slightly cheaper than Hostal Inambu
Restaurant El Alamo
Carretera Yarinacocha, block 26
excellent fish dishes, slightly cheaper than Hostal Inambu
(p.538).
Estoraque
is probably the best restaurant. The extensive menu includes
caiman (p.539).
Try the local [fish] specialty
patarashca (fresh fish cooked in
bijao leaves), or the
delicious
satapatera
(soup in a turtle shell) (p.538).
Bars
Towards the waterfront are most of the liveliest bars (try
El Grande Paraiso ["The
Big Paradise"]); if you fancy something quieter, the lodges
around the lake make a good spot for an evening drink
(p.539).
Tourist attractions in Pucallpa
Tourist week in September:
The annual festival for visitors - the Semana Turistica de
la Region Ucayali [Tourist Week of Ucayali region] - is
usually held in the last week of September;mostly artesanía
and forest produce markets plus folklore music and dance
(p.536).
Markets: If you have
an hour or so to while away in the town itself, both the
downtown food market on [Jirón] Independencia and the older
central market on [Jirón] Dos de Mayo are worth checking
out; the latter in particular varied stalls full of jungle
produce. The port of
La
Hoyada and and the older nearby
Puerto Italia are also
bustling with activity by day (p.537).
School of Painting:
The only other attractions in town are the
Usko-Ayar Amazonia School of
Painting, at Jirón Sanchez Cerro 467 (Mon-Fri
8am-5pm; free, the home of the school's founding father, the
self-taught artist
Pablo
Amaringo. Once a
vegetalista-curandero
[vegetarian healer], Dom Amaringo used to use the
hallucinogenic ayahuasca, as do most Peruvian jungle
healers, as an aid to divination and curing; his students'
works, many of which are displayed at his house, display the
same ayahuasca-inspired visions of the forest wilderness as
his own paintings do (p.537).
Local Museum: On
Calle Inmaculada, the Museo Regional de Historia Natural, or
the Regional Natural History Museum (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm;
$1.50), exhibits dried and stuffed Amazon insects, fish and
animals and has good displays of local crafts, including
ceramics produced by the Shipibo Indians, plus other
material objects such as clothing and jewelery from local
Indian tribes. There are also works by the Pucallpa-born
wood sculptor
Augustin
Rivas, who once ran an artists' haven at Lago
Yarinacocha, but now runs ayahuasca sessions in the Iquitos
region (p.537).
Artesanía shops in Pucallpa
Artesanía shops can be found at:
-- Jirón Mariscal Cáceres, block 5
-- Jirón Tarapaca, block 8
-- Jirón Tanca, block 6 (p.537).
Tours and many attractions around Pucallpa
Guides
José Silva Nube, Jirón Aguaytia 145 (opposite the Hostal Los
Delfines [The Dolphins], T. 061-597143) offers his services
as a local-guide in the area and has his own boats (p.540).
Zoo of Barboncocha 6km
Some 6km out of town, along the highway towards Lima,
there's a small lakeside settlement and zoological park at
Barboncocha. Known as the
Parque
Natural de Barboncocha (p.537) (daily 9am-5.30pm;
$1), it consists of almost
two hundred hectares of lakeside reserve
with plenty of alligators, birds (particularly parrots and
macaws), boa constrictors and the usual caged monkeys and
black jaguars. Colectivos to Barboncocha (25min; 60 cents)
can be caught from near the food market on Avenida 7 de
Junio; or hail a motorcycle taxi (20min; $3) from anywhere
in town (p.538).
Lago Yarinacocha 9km: huge
lake - dolphin watching - river channels to Shipibo
natives and tourist lodges
|
Map
of Yarinacocha lake with tourist indications:
Puerto Callao, Restaurant / Hostal El Pescador
("The Fisherman"), Bus Terminal, Hostal Los
Delfines ("The Dolphines"), the Maroti-Shobo
Artesanía Co-operative, the Summer Institue of
Linguistics (SIL), and the Cabaña Lodge only
reachable by boat. |
Some 9km from Pucallpa, and easily reached by bus or
colectivo (20min; 30-50 cents) from the food market on the
corner of [Jirón] Independencia and [Jirón] Ucayali, LAGO
YARINACOCHA is without doubt the most beautiful place to
stay near Pucallpa. The lake is gigantic and, apart from the
tiny main port where the buses drop off, is edged with
secondary forest growth around most of its perimeter.
Dolphins can usually be seen surfacing and diving into
water; but this is best witnessed by hiring one of the
rowing boats (about $1.50 an hour) available daily from the
lakeside.
Around the [lake's] port itself, and to a lesser extent,
hidden behind the vegetation elsewhere, there is
considerable settlement, but most of it is rustic and
wooden. River channels lead off towards small villages of
Shipibo Indians and the
limited range of tourist lodges (p.538).
Tourist lodges around the
Yarinacocha Lake
The lodges are around the lake Yarinacocha. The lodges are
far more expensive than a basic hotel, but are wonderfully
positioned with individual chalets, mosquito-proof
restaurants and offering organized trips onto the lake and
into the forest.
--
La Cabaña -
possibly the first jungle lodge built in Peru - is an
excellent place to stay though the management requests
bookings in advance, not least so that they can send their
boat to
Puerto Callao
to meet visitors; they have an office in Pucallpa at Jirón 7
de Junio 1043, T. 061-616679, Fax 579242
-- La Perla (no telephone)
which has highly recommended restaurant for patrons, is
located more or less next door to
La Cabaña but is slightly more expensive,
with the price including full board; accommodation (in
bungalows) is similar to that of
La Cabaña, though it's a smaller place
with a different, more intimate, (p.539) atmosphere. Like La
Cabaña, it can be reached only by boat (p.540).
-- Jana Shobo, T. 061-596943, www.janashobo.tk
has a restaurant, library, comfortable rooms and will pick
up from Pucallpa airport (p.540).
-- Medical center
Not a lodge at all, it is sometimes possible to stay in the
Medical Center at the village of
Nueva Luz de Fatima ["New Fatima Light"], a
small settlement a little further down the same bank of
Yarinacocha, beyond
La
Perla lodge. Gilber Reategui, an English-speaking
neighbour of the Medical Center, can arrange for meals if
required; he is also a jungle guide and has a peque-peque
called
Mi Normita,
which is usually beached at Puerto Callao on the lake when
not touring. Write to Sr. Gilber Reategui, c/o Ruperto
Perez, Maynas 350, Yarinachocha, Pucallpa, Ucayali, Peru,
for advance bookings (p.540).
Puerto Callao [Callao
port]: Chicha music - best artesanía of Shipibo and Conibo
natives
The port, which is where most travelers stay, is PUERTO
CALLAO, a small town known locally (and slightly ironically)
as the "Shangri-la de la Selva" [Tibetan monastery of the
jungle]. Here, the bars and wooden shacks are animated by an
almost continuous blast of chicha music. The settlement
boasts one of the best jungle Indian craft workshops in the
Amazon, the
Moroti-Shobo
Crafts Co-operative - a project originally
organized by Oxfam but now operated by the local Shipibo and
Conibo Indians. Located on the main plaza, it sells some
beautifully moulded ceramics, carved wood and dyed textiles,
most of them very reasonably priced.
Native villages: San
Francisco, Nuevo Destino, Santa Clara and more far away
Various excursions to see wildlife, visit Indian villages,
or just to cross the lake, are all touted along the
waterfront. The standard day-trip goes to the Shipibo
village of San Francisco ($10), sometimes continuing to the
slightly remoter settlement of Nuevo Destino and Santa
Clara (around $15).
San Francisco is now almost completely geared towards
tourism, so for a more adventurous trip you'll do better to
hire a peque-peque canoe and boatman on your own (from
around $30 a day); these canoes can take up to six or seven
people and you can share costs, though if you want to go
further afield (say on a three-day excursion) expect prices
to rise to $150 a day.
Botanical garden 45 minutes
by peque-peque
There's also a pristine botanical garden, the Jardín
Botánico Chullachaqui (daily 9am-5pm; free) on the far
right-hand side of the lake. To reach it you have to take a
peque-peque canoe, a 45-minute ride ($2) from Callao Puerto
[Callao port] , then walk for a little over half an hour
down a clearly marked jungle trail. On (p. 538)
arrival, you'll find the garden in a beautiful and exotic
location with over 2300 medicinal plants, mostly native of
the region (p.539).
From Pucallpa downriver to Iquitos
Several days in a hammock
There are several boats weekly from Pucallpa to Nauta (a
trip of 5-6 days) and Iquitos (a trip of 5-7 days) (p.568).
Traveling from Pucallpa to Iquitos on a boat is a trip of
over 1000km of water and can be good or bad depending on the
boat. [...] However, if you are going that way, you may want
to relax in a hammock for a few days and arrive in the style
the rubber barons were accustomed to.
[The trip from Pucallpa to Iquitos is 1000km long because
the rivers in the Amazon basin are absolutely natural and
have kept their meanders without any correction and
violation of the white man. So the ships pass every meander
and the trip takes it's time.
The price for the trip from Lima to Iquitos by bus and boat
(14 days) or by airplane (1 1/2 hours) is more or less the
same ($90) so most Peruvians from Iquitos take the airplane
and by this mostly tourists are on the boats. So when you
love the forest and want to get the jungle feeling take the
boat and try it out, but not at a cheap price because then
the standard on board will be very low. The boats downwards
are coursing in the middle of the river, the boats upwards
are coursing near to the river bank where the flow is not so
strong, so one sees more of the river bank when one is
traveling upwards].
Ports in Pucallpa, boats an
prices: Large riverboats generally leave Pucallpa
from
La Hoyada
port, 4km from the Plaza de Armas along Avenida Mariscal,
while smaller launches and canoes tend to go from
Puerto Italia, which is
slightly nearer.
It should cost around $30 per person, including food, but if
you want a cabin this can rise to about $50. Few [of the
cheap cargo] boats on this stretch of water actually have
cabins, though, and while they're useful for storing your
gear [luggage], you'll probably be more comfortable (and
certainly cooler) sleeping in a hammock, strung under some
mosquito netting.
Find a boat
[As a tourist go to a travel office in Pucallpa and ask for
a trip to Iquitos, it's a very common trip, so you have a
reference and can be sure the boat will leave in time and
you know what is inclusive or not].
The cheapest and most effective way of finding a boat is to
go down to the ports and ask around. Try to fix a price and
a departure date with a reputable-looking outfit; [but this
is very riskfull].
[Peruvians with only little money are speaking with the
captain and string their hammocks up on the deck of the boat
even days before leaving. By this also tourists can save
money because they don't spend money for a hotel, but theft
risk is very high]. At the same time there will be less risk
of the boat leaving without you.
Paperwork: Depending
on how big the boat is and how many stops it makes, the
journey amount of paperwork to go through, since this is a
commercial port and one of the main illicit cocaine trails;
you'll have to show your documents to the port police (PIP)
and get permission from the naval office (your captain
should help with all of this).
If the captain asks for money upfront, don't give the whole
bundle to him; you may never see him or his boat again.
Additionally, even when everything looks ready for
departure, don't be surprised if there is a delay of a day
or two - boats leave frequently but unpredictably.
Food on board: Food
on board [on big boats is generally good, on little and
cheap boats or on cargo ships food] can be very unappetizing
[mostly you have to bring your plate and spoon yourself and
there is only one menu], so it's worth taking some extra
luxuries, like a few cans of fish, a packet or two of
biscuits, and several bottles of water. [When there is no
plate make a bowl out of an empty water bottle when you have
a knife. The Peruvian spoons are formed very sharp so you
also can use them as a knife for food].
The trip with it's stops
and possibilities: En route to Iquitos, boats often
stop at the settlements of Contamana (10hr; $7) and Requena
(a further 4-5 days; $20). In theory it's possible to use
these as pit stops - hopping off one boat for a couple of
days while waiting for another - but you may end up stuck
here for longer than you bargained. There isn't much at
Contamana, on the right bank of the Ucayali, but it's okay
to camp, and food can be bought without any problem. A
better stopping point is the larger and more pleasant
Requena, developed during the rubber boom on an isolated
stretch of the Río Ucayali, a genuine jungle town that is in
many ways (p.540)
like Iquitos was just fifty years ago. There are a couple of
basic hostels here and one quite good one (contact the
Hostal Amazon Garden in
Iquitos; or you can camp on the outskirts of town. For those
going downstream, it's about a day's journey from Iquitos,
with boats leaving regularly (around $15 a person).
You can also access Pacaya Samiria National Reserve by
boat from here, though most people reach it from Lagunas. A
few hours to the north, just a few huge bends away, the Río
Marañón merges with the Ucayali to form the mighty Amazon
(p.541).
[When you are on a cargo ship the ship is welcomed 10km
before Iquitos already by "flying merchants" on fast boats
who are bargaining about the price of the goods].