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| Sunset on the Aria Amazon |
Shawna had seen an ad for this
river cruise on the Amazon with
Aqua Expeditions and we decided that we had to go. We booked the trip three years ago but kept moving it each year due to other plans. So this year, we finally made it. We spent seven nights on the cruise and then another five nights in
Lima to explore the city and indulge in the culinary delights (Lima has two of the top 50 restaurants in the world and is well known for it's cuisine)! We were on the river during the high water season which is also the rainy season but the rain really only got in the way a couple of times - we lucked out that most of our excursions were rain free (or only had a slight drizzle).
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| My Anaconda Don't Want None... |
Accommodations:
Four Points Sheraton Miraflores - We stayed here the first night in Lima. It is what you would expect - basic amenities, clean rooms and in a good location.
Aria Amazon - This is the boat we took with Aqua Expeditions, staying onboard for seven nights. The boat is beautiful with natural wood throughout and accommodates 32 people in 16 rooms. Our room was great with a king sized bed, sofa, bathroom (which had one of the best showers for a boat - rain shower with great water pressure) and floor to ceiling windows to overlook the river while lazing around in bed! The dining room was nice with views of the river and different configurations for seating. On the top deck was a large, comfortable lounge with a bar where the onboard activities occurred.
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| Aria Amazon |
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| Lounge/Bar on Aria Amazon |
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| Room on Aria Amazon |
The Lot Boutique Hotel - We stayed here for four nights in Lima after the cruise. It's a small hotel with modern decor located in Miraflores so very convenient. The room was clean with great AC and wifi. The breakfast (included) was not great so we went to Starbucks instead in the mornings.
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| Where Maranon and Amazon rivers meet |
Activities:
Lima
We flew business class on the way there via LAX, leaving on the Wednesday night, arriving early on Thursday morning. While we slept for most of the flight, we still took a nap at the hotel after we checked in. That afternoon, we walked along the
boardwalk in
Miraflores which is a beautiful walk passing through several parks with views of the ocean. We stopped to watch the paragliders and found out that Charlie had done this several years prior.
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| Miraflores Boardwalk |
Amazon
The next morning we flew to
Iquitos which is where we would board the cruise. Aqua Expeditions picked us all up at the airport and drove us into town where we first had lunch and then did a quick tour of the town. Iquitos is a major trade town on the river with no roads going into the town so the only way to get there is via plane or boat. We rode via skiff to see a local river tribe that danced for us (although they did not look happy) and then boarded our boat. We unpacked, showered, went through the safety instructions and then had dinner where we met a couple from NYC - the sister of one of the guys knows Graham so of course text messages ensued with them talking about how small a world it is!
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| Dancing with local river tribe |
The other passengers on board were from NYC, NJ, CA, Mexico, Singapore, & Peru. Some of these passengers were only onboard for the first three nights where in
Nauta they would disembark and then we were joined by another group who would do the remaining four nights. The second group included a large family from New Hampshire and AZ (Scottsdale and Tucson much to our surprise), Nebraska, Mexico, Germany and South Africa.
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| Beautiful Tributary on the Amazon |
While onboard, our days consisted of eating breakfast, doing a morning excursion, returning to the boat for lunch and a nap, doing an afternoon/evening excursion and then returning to the boat for more relaxing and dinner. We joked that we became complete sloths on this trip - eating and sleeping a lot with very little exercise! Before each excursion, we had to spray us down with deet - the mosquitoes were only bad a few times - however, even with all the deet, Shawna managed to still get bitten quite a bit - thankfully, the bites did not itch too badly!
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| Caiman |
Most of the excursions involved riding in the skiffs down the Maranon and Ucayali Rivers (which both border the
Pacaya Samiria National Reserve), traveling in the smaller tributaries to see the wildlife. Some of the tributaries were beautiful - surrounded with plants and sometimes lily pads. A couple of times, we rode into the evening so we could spot the caimans and listen to the river come alive with a symphony of wildlife sounds. Among the wildlife, we saw:
- many birds including storks, hawks, king vultures, owls, kingfishers, "Jesus Christ" birds because they walk on water, macaws, toucans, hoatzins, and blue throated continga
- bats
- sloths
- monkeys including capuchin, howler, spider and squirrel
- pink toed tarantula
- snakes including several anacondas (one being 10 feet long) and a red tailed boa constrictor (also about 10 feet long)
- caimans
- frogs (the cutest in the world that we could hold in our hands) including poison dart frogs
- pink and grey river dolphins (the pink comes from blood flowing close to the skin during mating season)
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| Sloth |
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| Bats |
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| Hawk |
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| Squirrel Monkeys |
In addition to wildlife viewing on the skiffs, we also did the following:
- cooking demonstration for making ceviche and pisco sours
- presentations on flora and fauna, wildlife, and geography of the area
- massages which were quite good
- Santa came by after dinner to hand out Aria hats!
- singing by the crew - they played multiple instruments and sang Peruvian songs - they actually did a nice job and got the guests to get up and dance and of course do the conga line!
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| Crew jamming to Peruvian music |
On the last morning, we packed up and then went to the manatee rescue center (was not really worth it) in Iquitos before heading to the airport to fly back to Lima. We didn't want to leave the boat!
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| River Village |
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| Avatar Tree |
Lima
Given our lack of activity from the prior seven days, we opted to do walking tours each day to try to get in some exercise. Over the three days, we did the following activities:
- City of Queens and Kings Tour with Haku Tours - This was a great three hour walking tour of downtown Lima. We were picked up at the hotel, drove downtown and then walked around the area, learning a lot of about the history and how the country became so diverse with Europeans, Chinese and Japanese immigrants. The beautiful buildings were built in colonial and European styles. We went inside the Saint Francis Assisi Church (which is huge) and visited the catacombs underneath the church. We ended the tour with a tasting of a caramel filled churro.
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| Main Square in Lima |
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| Saint Francis Assisi Church |
- Food Tour with Lima Gourmet Company - We visited three different neighborhoods, driving via van between them and then walking around in each. It was a great tour where we stopped at the following places:
- Bisetti - a coffee place in Barranco where we tried the cappuccino.
- La Bodega Verde - a cafe in Barranco with a cute garden and a very old tree from the 1800s that produces lucama (which is a fruit). We tried a smoothie made from this fruit - it was very thick and tasted like caramel.
- Market in Miraflores - we tasted several fruit (mango, avocado, passion fruit, custard apple and a few others - all very tasty), saw a variety of other food including vegetables and fish. Peru has over 3500 varieties of potatoes, 400 varieties of chili peppers and 1000 varieties of quinoa!
- Embarcadero 41 - we learned how to make pisco sours and ceviche and then got to enjoy our creations!
- Huaca Pucllana - a restaurant overlooking ruins in Miraflores. We tasted roasted chicken (which was probably the best chicken we have ever had), beef that was marinated overnight, tamales and mashed potatoes with shrimp on top. Everything was delicious!
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| Market in Miraflores |
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| Making Pisco Sours |
- Barranco Walking Tour with Haku Tours - We were again picked up at the hotel and drove over to this neighborhood and walked around for about two hours. This tour was not as informative but we saw beautiful mansions (the rich people moved out of downtown Lima in the 19th century) and murals. The area is now quite artsy and bohemian. At the end of the tour, we tasted picarones which is a Peruvian donut made with sweet potato and squash and is served with a fig sauce - YUM.
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| Mansion in Barranco |
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| Mural in Barranco |
- After this tour, we opted not to be driven back to the hotel and instead we walked back along the boardwalk.
Restaurants:
Lima
La Mar - We had lunch the first day in Lima. Great seafood restaurant. We sat at the bar and shared a ceviche trio and a fish dish with rice and plantains - very tasty!
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| La Mar |
Osaka - We had dinner here the first night in Lima and it was probably our favorite restaurant. The cuisine is Nikkei which is Japanese / Peruvian fusion and each dish was so flavorful. We shared the beef with avocado over chips, salmon and wagyu over crispy rice, crispy duck over rice with bacon and mushrooms and ginger sorbet and chocolate mousse for dessert.
Maido - We had dinner here - restaurant is one of the world's top 50 serving Peruvian and Nikkei food. Decor was cool with ropes hanging from the ceiling and food was very tasty. We shared a beef roulette with foam, a taco, and a lamb dumpling for appetizers, miso cod for an entree, and a plantain dessert with fruit and coconut milk. We also started with a cocktail, shared a bottle of Albarino wine and had a glass of Riesling dessert wine. Needless to say we were stuffed!
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| Maido |
Alembic Pisco Bar - This bar is located inside a hotel near where we were staying. It was the only bar nearby that was open at 6pm (most of the bars open at 7pm) so we stopped here for a pisco sour before heading to dinner.
IK - We had dinner here - restaurant is cool inside but service was terrible and food was OK. We shared two appetizers and an entree.
Massala - We were not terribly hungry since we did the food tour earlier in the day so we walked over to a local India restaurant for dinner and shared a chicken tikka appetizer and lamb masala for an entree. The food was better than we expected.
La Bonbonniere - Located on the boardwalk in Miraflores overlooking the ocean. We stopped here for lunch, sharing a couple of appetizers and a bottle of wine.
Malabar - We had dinner here on New Year's Eve, also our last night in Lima. The restaurant is owned by the same chef who designed the menu for our cruise. The restaurant is nice and the food was delicious. We shared a white corn salad, grilled scallops and asparagus with ibirico ham for appetizers, pan fried paiche for an entree and mango meringue for dessert.
Amazon
Fitzcarraldo - Located in Iquitos. We had lunch here before boarding the cruise. The restaurant used to be a house that was occupied when the area was booming with rubber exports. It was named after a movie (of the same name) that was produced about the Amazon. They served us fish with vegetables - quite tasty.
Aria Amazon - All of our meals were onboard the ship and they were all delicious! The menu was created by Chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino who is a famous chef in Peru and has several restaurants including Malabar which we went to for New Years Eve. Two of our meals were off the boat - one was a breakfast that they served to us on the skiff while parked in a beautiful tributary and the other was lunch served at one of the centers located in the reserve. On board, breakfast and lunch were served buffet style and dinner was a pre-fix menu with an appetizer, entree and dessert. All of the meals were variations of Peruvian dishes (except one day we had Asian cuisine and for Christmas Eve they served American dishes - e.g. turkey, potatoes). Wine and beer were included in the cost so we took advantage of that!
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| Lunch on Aria Amazon |
