*PERU ADVENTURE* Amazon Riverboat Tour, Nov 5-14, 2006

Carnival Cruises meets Africa Queen: upper deck suites for your comfort over 3 days, rice and hammocks below. Tarapoto to Iquitos Riverboat Tour

10 Days November 5 - 14

Cost $995

SIGN UP FOR BOTH TOURS END ON END! Ride the Highest Paved Road - and immediately follow with this tour. Too much fun!

IN 2004 many PAC Tour riders took on the project of raising money for a new school deep in the Amazon Rain Forest 20 kilometers from the jungle city of Iquitos. The remote village where the school was built is very basic and without modern services. Over $20,000 was contributed to buy the materials need to build a seven room school for 350 children.

Now, one year later the school is up and going. There are 14 teachers who teach the children in a revolving schedule during the day. The school and village still need many items such as books for all ages and classroom supplies.

Our next tour to the school will be to deliver more supplies and help work at the school where needed. This tour will expose us to the remote areas of Peru and we will meet the local people as friends, not as tourists.

The school is up and running: 350 kids and 14 teachers, thanks to the work and fundraising of PACTOUR and its participants

This tour is adventure travel intended for outgoing and energetic travelers. Our motels will be safe and clean with air continuing and color television. However we will travel into the back country in four wheel drive vehicles to areas not seen by many people from the United States. There are several english speaking guides who will join our group for this tour.

A highlight of the tour will be traveling by boat for three days down the Amazon River. This boat is kinda like if Carnival Cruises meets Humphrey Bogart and his “Africa Queen”. This is a public boat that makes the 44 hour trip down river to Iquitos and the 60 hour return trip every week. The boat is about 100 feet long and has three decks. The lower deck is filled with cargo like bags of rice, beans and bananas. The middle deck is a big open room where people can attach hammocks and pile their supplies. The upper deck has ten cabins and more open space. We will be staying in cabins on the upper deck. Each cabin has 2 bunk beds or 4 beds total. We will have 2 people per cabin which will allow extra room to store your gear on the upper bunk bed. There are bathrooms and showers in a separate area near the cabins. You should bring your own toilet paper, soap and towel.

We have several options depending on the boat schedule. We should know an approximate departure time the night before...plus or minus 6 hours. It is best to hang loose and see how the boat freight loading plans are going. The boat could depart at 10 AM if they don’t have much to load or they could depart at 8 PM if the loading is busy. Either way we will have several things to do in Yurimaguas during the day. There is a great street market two blocks from our hotel which is always a fun place to visit. We also have the option to tour by small boat to some of the areas along the river.

The boat will be filled with local families traveling with small children, chickens and people sleeping in hammocks. Now is a good time to get to know the boat and your neighbors. We will hire the boat cook to prepare us meal from the food we brought from the market. We usually eat after the rest of the boat is finished using the kitchen. Traveling by riverboat at night in the jungle is an experience you will always remember.

Arrival in Iquitos. When our boat arrives in Iquitos we will stay at a nice hotel and have time to visit the local night life. The next day we start our work at the school. Several of the teachers will meet with us to go shopping for classroom items. There are several office supply stores and book stores in Iquitos that have the necessary materials we need for the school. At the school we will meet daily with the students and share our experiences from the United States.

Meeting the kids. Last year there were 12 people who went on this tour and helped build the school. After the tour everyone said meeting the children and people of the village were the highlights of the tour. This is a difficult concept to explain to Americans who rarely meet life changing people during their vacations. The emotional attachment our group will feel for the people we meet will stay with us. If you want to ever experience those feeling either of these tours to Peru are for you.

If You Don’t Speak Spanish? Our guides will help you order at restaurants and check into hotels. The local people are friendly and curious to see cyclists visit their remote towns.

Cost and Payments. The price of the Riverboat and School Builder’s tour is $995. A $500 deposit is needed by July 15th. The remaining $495 is due September 1st.

Lima Arrival Plans. You must arrive in Lima, Peru on Saturday, November 5th. If you can’t arrive Saturday you must arrive a day earlier on Friday. We will meet you at the airport and transport you to our base hotel in Lima.

Sunday morning, November 6th we will have breakfast at the hotel. Then we make a short city tour combined with our shopping trip for school supplies. Lunch will be provided in early afternoon. Then we go to the airport for our flight to Tarapoto.

Tarapoto Arrival Plans. We will take a pick-up truck shuttle with our gear from the airport to our hotel. Our hotel in Tarapoto has a nice swimming pool. We will have time to go swimming and eat dinner downtown in the evening. The night life in Tarapoto is quiet but it is is good time to relax at the Plaza de Armas downtown and watch the local people.

Traveling Overland to Yurimaguas. The next day we will eat breakfast at our hotel restaurant. At 8:00 AM our truck or taxi or bus will meet us at the hotel to begin our 90 mile drive to Yurimaguas. The ride will be rough with plenty of bumps on rutted jungle roads. We will get some seat cushions from the foam mattress store to pad the well worn vehicle seats.

After traveling for about an hour we will stop at the waterfalls near the mountain ridge summit. There is a paved hiking trail that goes 200 meters into a canyon. The walkway and steps can be wet and slippery, so wear good walking shoes. At the end of the canyon is an exotic 50 meter waterfall. You can go swimming or wading in the pool. After a snack and something to drink we will be back in the vehicles to continue through the jungle. The road is one lane wide as it snakes down the mountain. We will stop several times for photos and visit some rural villages.

Lunch will be served in a roadside restaurant in early afternoon. We will arrive in Yurimaguas near 4:00 PM. After checking into our hotel we will go down to the boat docks and reserve a boat for tomorrow.

Pillows, Blankets and Hammocks. When we get on the boat in Yurimaguas we will be sleeping in cabins. Each cabin has a bunk bed. We will reserve the lower bed for sleeping and the upper bunk for your bike and luggage. You have the option to sleep in your cabin or out on the open deck. If you think you would like to sleep outside, we recommend purchasing a hammock,blanket and pillow at the market in Yurimaguas. These items will also be colorful souvenirs from Peru when you get home. We will have time to shop in Yurimaguas the morning before our boat departs.

The Boat Down the River. There are 25 different boats making the round trip from Yurimaguas to Iquitos and back. The ride takes 44 hours downstream to Iquitos and 60 hours coming back. The boat stays a few days in each port to load cargo and get ready for the return trip. The boat schedule is random at best. We will not know which boat we will be traveling on until the day before we depart Yurimaguas. Lon has made this tour five times and has learned to be flexible about reserving a boat.

After we decide which boat we will be traveling, we can make the necessary improvements for our journey. For example we will buy a selection of food and pasta that can be prepared for American tastes by the boat kitchen chef. We may also buy chairs for the deck or electric fans for the cabins. Each boat is different, so we will need to evaluate the facilities and then decide if we need to improve anything.

On the Riverboat. Once the boat is moving we will have plenty of time to relax. Bring a good book, a deck of cards, a writing journal or something to do to pass the time. You will be able to walk on all the decks and meet many of the local passengers. Bring family photos and a translation dictionary to help talk to the local passengers. We will stop at about twenty villages along the way to unload bags of rice and pickup bunches of bananas. There will be many opportunities for photos of the area jungle life.

The boat will take 42 to 44 hours to reach Iquitos. We will sleep on the boat two nights. If the timing is right we might get off the boat in Nauta at the 36 hour mark and go overland the last 70 miles to the school near Iquitos

Arrival In Iquitos. We will stay at the El Dorado Plaza Hotel in Iquitos. This is the best (only) 5 star Hotel in the region. It will give us a chance to return to civilization after the boat tour. This hotel has all the modern conveniences of of a good American Hotel in New York.

Visit to the School of the Dolphins. We will visit the school as soon as possible after our arrival. We need to evaluate what we can do to help at the school during our next 3 days in Iquitos. The school children want to have a welcome festival for us. We will be able to meet all the teachers and discuss plans for the future.

We will have a local cookout with the village with dancing and homemade. We will deliver the books and supplies we brought with us. The time goes very quickly and we will be busy organizing shopping trips for supplies with the teachers.

Other Local Tours. We will make time to visit some of the local sites near Iquitos. Early morning is the best time to travel into the jungle before the heat of the afternoon becomes intense. During one of the evenings it will be fulfilling to organize a restaurant party for 40 of the street children. This has become a tradition for our tours. This a good way to meet many local children who live on the street without daily meals.

Extension Tours. We will begin our travel back to the United States on Sunday afternoon, November 13. If anyone would like to stay in Iquitos a few more days or tour to other parts of Peru we can help you make a travel plan. The costs for extra days will be determined on an individual basis. With hotels. meals, transportation and tour s, budget at least $100 per day. Any changes in airline flights from our standard tour will need to be decided before September 1st.

In summary. This is an adventure travel tour. Not many 'gringo' tourists travel to the jungle areas we will visit. The people are friendly and the conditions are safe. However this tour is intended for people who want to see the remote region of Peru as friends of the people and not just as tourists. Contact us at www.pactour.com

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