Protests in Iquitos

Last night I heard chanting and a loud uproar from outside. Protests have begun in Iquitos. I woke up early to go to iiap again with Freddie.  There were not many motor cars around and everything was pretty quiet. We managed to find a motor car and jumped in. On the way to iiap we realised that no one was out. The roads were covered in rubbish as people knew the bin men and cleaners were on strike so the public abused this. There was broken glass on the roads to stop the motor cars from going out. The aim of the protests was to stop everything from functioning. The protesters didn’t want anyone using the roads or having their shops open. We went down one street and there were guys with sticks and masks stopping people from exiting the roads. There were lots of police in the main square but not on the roads with guys and sticks. We decided it was too impossible to go to iiap as it was too dangerous. So we turned around and went back to La Pascana. Freddie was going to show one of the guys in the centre how to use a corer. In La Pascana I spoke to Wayne and Jacob for a bit and another guy joined us. He is involved in a project to regain traditional, cultural aspects to village life. For example, types of food that were traditionally grown in villages if re-grown would provide profit for the village. He also spoke to us about utilising medicinal plants in the forest. It was really interesting.

Wayne then spoke to me about his research and showed me his field work equipment. He had gas chambers which are plastic containers with an inner tube surrounding them. You place the container on water. Then attach a syringe to the tubing coming out of the container. Then you get rid of the air in the syringe and collect the gas with it. Then you insert the collected gas into an exotainer. The exotainers are examined in the UK.

For lunch due to the protests most restaurants were shut. However, the burger restaurant was pretending to be shut by having the shutters down but in fact it was open, so we crept in through a tiny side door to eat lunch. We then went to get money out and while Jacob had his back turned a swarm of people were approaching running up the road. So Freddie tapped Jacob on the shoulder and said ‘err Jacob I think we need to get out of here!’ so we power walked out of there while the sea of people followed.