Serious challenges to expansion
Much of the tourism along the Amazon now is in jungle lodges, Rodriguez said, but she expects more of that to shift to riverboats.
Galli Zugaro pointed out that riverboats are the only vessels allowed to take daytrips on the rivers in the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, so they offer the maximum possible wildlife viewing.
Rodriguez said Jungle Experiences plans to add a fourth ship in 2021. Likewise, Aqua Expeditions has a second vessel due for arrival in 2020.
But the cost of entrance and expansion is high.
With a population of nearly half a million, Iquitos is the largest city in the world that can’t be reached by car, making it difficult, and pricey, to bring in supplies.
“It’s very, very expensive when you need to transport all these things,” Rodriguez said. “It is much easier for a new entrant to buy a company or existing boat than construct new ships.”
Indeed, most of the boats sailing today are refurbished vessels from a company that went belly up after 9/11. Rodriguez said her fourth ship is also a renovation.
Aqua’s Aria, however, is a newbuild from a Peruvian shipyard. And Galli Zugaro is having his new vessel, the Aqua Nera, built in Vietnam.
The cost after having the boat shipped to the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil isn’t cheaper than building domestically, but he said he liked the quality and detail of a boat the shipyard had built for the Mekong. The yard is also closer to his home in Singapore, making it easier to monitor the project.
Iquitos’ remote nature also presents challenges for companies looking to expand other types of tourism in the region. While there are ample flights from Lima, few tourists heading to river cruises or jungle lodges spend much time in the once rich rubber port whose grand, tiled, 19th-century buildings have largely fallen into decay and now look out over floating shantytowns.
Schreiner noted that in addition to a lack of tourism infrastructure, Iquitos has a reputation as a center for drug trafficking. Indeed, walking along the malecon, or seawall, that overlooks the Amazon, we passed the skeletons of several large ships grounded in the trees, vessels that our guide said had been abandoned years ago when their operators were caught trafficking cocaine.
Rodriguez, however, said that things are changing, which is why she and her family, who are from — and whose businesses are based in — Iquitos, last year renovated a hotel overlooking the main town square and reopened it as a Doubletree by Hilton.
“What we saw is an opportunity, because we want, as a company, to take a step ahead of everybody who is looking at Iquitos to have an international brand,” she said. “So reflagging this hotel as a Doubletree, we saw it as a milestone.”
Like the Zafiro, the hotel is luxury by Peruvian standards and a solid four-star property by U.S. standards. Again, like the Zafiro, the decor is understated European contemporary with all the necessary upscale touches, including comfortable beds and quality linens and pillows.
With the hotel, Jungle Experiences offers land packages that include trips to two small wildlife rescue centers, including the Manatee Rescue Center, which gets much of its support for saving the threatened freshwater manatees from the Dallas Aquarium.
A second refuge, the Mariposario Pilpintuwasi butterfly farm, is a short ride down the Amazon from Iquitos, and like the manatee center, it also houses other animals, including a jaguar, ocelots and monkeys that were rescued from homes or illegal traffickers.
The main sight in Iquitos is its sprawling Belen market, where you can buy everything from fresh piranha to handicrafts and local herbs and medicines, including dried coca leaves and the jungle version of Viagra, whose Spanish name translates to “underwear buster.”
No trip to Iquitos would be complete without a ride in one of the many motorcycle-powered tuk-tuks, which are the main form of transportation around the city.
But like the river itself, Iquitos still suffers from its own safety perceptions. And its remote nature and the cost of importing supplies means it still lacks things like modern supermarkets.
Which is why Galli Zugaro remains skeptical about much changing on the river cruise or tourism landscape, at least in the near future.
“In the 11 years I’ve been going, I haven’t seen a huge amount of progress in Iquitos,” he said. “Which, to be honest, I like.”