The Amazonian experience

I think I've been to some of the most interesting places so far since last time I made a post.
Last Saturday I visited an indigeneous family that collects latex from trees in Brazil. The father -perhaps my age- spoke Portuguese very badly, but it was cool to talk and play with his 5 children. They gave me some of their little treasures: seeds of good luck, and unfortunately I didn't have anything to give in return.
On Sunday I took a bot to Puerto Nariño, a Colombian village 90km up the Amazon. There are about 3,000 people living there, and probably half of them are children. I stayed there a couple of days, and I must say they were extremely nice to me. Some of them even memorized my name and greeted me quite warmly whenever they would see me around. By the way, there were no cars in the village -and neither roads-, and the only land motor vehicle was a tractor. They had electricity from 6pm to 10pm sharp, and a community phone that could be used only a few hours a day. They had GSM reception, though. Local population was partly indigenous and partly Colombians from other parts of the country. As well as in Leticia, many people moved there looking for peace and some rest from guerrilla and crime.
And on Monday I hired a guide together with some other tourists and we walked a few hours through the jungle to San Martin, an indigenous community of about 400 people (Ticunas). They really lack a lot of things up there. They did not have any more drinking water as they had run out of the rain water they store -it's dry season now, and it hasn't rained for quite a while-. They are currently drinking boiled water from the river, but get diarreas from time to time. They also had a complete electricity installation reaching most houses. They received it as a gift some time ago, but the generator had broken down and there was nobody to repair it. I felt most useless when I said that I was an engineer and somebody sugested that I could have a look at it. I've never seen one such machine in close, and I'm not sure I would have been able to make any sense out of it. We stayed in total a couple of hours, talked to some people, bought some crafts, and payed the visitor tax that the chief of the village charged us, 2,000 pesos each (some 70 EURO cents), not much for the many needs they have. It was a very interesting experience to reflect about how much we have in our western world, about fair trade, and a unique chance to have some contact with this very humble but loving people.
The way back we did it in peque-peque, a sort of canoe 4 metres long and 80 cm wide with a simple motor. There were also several wholes in the boat, and seven of us on it, so you can imagine how much fun it was.
At present I am in the Peruvian town of Iquitos. I arrived today after travelling more than 600 kilometres in the Amazon river by fast boat. A 12 hour trip that started at 4 am, so I am pretty tired. According to the Lonely Planet this is the biggest town in the world without road links. You can only come here by boat or by plane. It has a very different look from Brazil. Roads are filled with motorbikes, motocarros and just a few cars. Motocarros are motorbikes modified in order to have two rear wheels and some sort of charriot to carry several passengers. I will take some pictures tomorrow, and will also explore around a little bit more. The local market is not far from my hotel, so that's promising. But now I will go and try to have some dinner, and then go to sleep. I think I need it after this long day.