Hostels and cheap hotels in Iquitos

Iquitos began life in 1739 when Jesuit José Bahamonde established settlements at Santa Barbara de Nanay and Santa Maria de Iquitos on the Río Mazán. It was a particularly daunting task, as the missionaries here faced the task of converting the fierce Iquito Indians, renowned as marksmen with their long poison-dart blowpipes. There are only one or two families of the Iquito tribe left, living way on the upper Río Nanay, and these days the region is better known for the Yaguar, Bora and Witoto tribes, whose handicraft can be seen virtually everywhere you turn in the modern city. The original town was founded in 1757 under the name of San Pablo de los Napeanos, but the present centre was established in 1864. By the end of the nineteenth century it was, along with Manaus in Brazil, one of the great rubber towns. From that era of grandeur a number of structures survive, but during this century Iquitos has vacillated between prosperity - as far back as 1938, the area was explored for oil - and the depths of depression. However, its strategic position on the Amazon, which makes it accessible to large ocean-going ships from the distant Atlantic, has ensured its importance. At present, still buoyed by the export of timber, petroleum, tobacco and Brazil nuts, and dabbling heavily in the trade of wild animals, tropical fish and birds, as well as an insecticide called barbasco, long used by natives as a fish poison, Iquitos is in a period of quite wealthy expansion. Hostels in Iquitos