Planning the trip

A piece of advice we found online was to visit the iPeru tourist office close to the Plaza de Armas in Iquitos. This turned out to be very useful as they gave us a full printed itinerary with different options and costs.

Iquitos to Cabo Pantoja

The first stage of the journey involves taking a boat from Iquitos to the border town of Cabo Pantoja. There are two general options for getting here (as with most river journeys in the Amazon): the slow boat, which takes 7 days and goes twice a month, or the fast boat, which takes 2 days and goes every Saturday and Tuesday. We opted for the fast boat. This boat is operated by Transporte Vichu and was scheduled to depart at 07:00 on Saturday. The day before on Friday, we visited their office (located here) and purchased the tickets. The ticket cost is 270 SOL and includes some snacks and small bottles of water.

The next morning at 6:15 we took a mototaxi to Puerto Ganso Azul for 4 SOL and after asking around a bit, found the boat. It was already largely filled with passengers. We departed very punctually at 07:00 and an hour later the boat arrived at Indiana. We were surprised that we had to take a 14 SOL mototaxi to the town of Mazan on the other side of the peninsula. Here another boat was waiting which half an hour later set out upstream on the Napo river.

Stopover in Santa Clotilde

The destination for this first day was Santa Clotilde, where the boat arrived at 15:00 and would have a 12 hour stopover. Santa Clotilde is a tiny town that is only connected to the outside world by river.

Upon arriving at Santa Clotilde, we were told the boat would leave the next morning at 04:30 and we would need to be there at 04:00. Here is where we got some mixed information from employees. The worker at the office told us that we would be able to sleep on the boat. However, when we arrived at Santa Clotilde it turned out we couldn't. The boat workers told us we needed to sleep in a hostel and here it got a bit weird. One of the workers told us accommodation was included at the Hospedaje Princesa, which is directly off the dock, but when we got there she told us the price was 20 SOL. Confused, I went back to the boat and another worker, apparently the boss, now told us it was NOT included. Since the price wasn't high we took the room which was very basic but had a private bathroom and a fan (with electricity till midnight). There isn't any WiFi here but there are many more hostels on the main street (one street up from the dock) and we were told some of those do offer WiFi.

Day two to Cabo Pantoja

The next morning we got to the boat at 4:10, finding it largely filled already and we took off very punctually again at 04:30. This was the longest day with 13 hours in the boat but a little around 17:30 we made it to Cabo Pantoja. There was one break around 12:00 in a small village where you could have lunch for 10 SOL.

On the dock of Cabo Pantoja we were met by a man named Rodrigo who offered to take us across the border to Nuevo Rocafuerte for $20 USD the next morning. Since there were 2 others on the boat wanting to cross as well the next morning we got the price down to $15 per person. He helped us quite a bit. First he showed us to the migration office which had already closed at 17:00 but we tried anyway. Then he helped us find a hostel, he showed us the municipal hostel (20 SOL, no electricity) and El Huacamayo. The woman told us 25 SOL, it was very basic with no fan, electricity for a few hours and a shared bathroom but there wasn't much choice.

Cabo Pantoja to Nuevo Rocafuerte to El Coca

The next morning the immigration office opened at 08:00 and we went to get stamped out of Peru. After that we went to the dock where Rodrigo awaited us with a small boat. The ride to Nuevo Rocafuerte took about an hour and a half and was very beautiful (we spotted a toucan!). When we arrived we made our way to the migrations office and officially entered Ecuador!

Getting to El Coca

The next step was getting from Nuevo Rocafuerte to El Coca. Rodrigo also helped us a lot with this. The night before when we arrived and met him, he told us there were two options. The first was a slow 9 hour boat that departed Nuevo Rocafuerte at 06:30 (not sure if this is every day) and cost $21. The second was a speedboat that left at 12:00, would take 4.5 hours and cost $38. We opted for the speedboat since that would get us in El Coca the same day and he made us reservations. So when we arrived in Nuevo Rocafuerte we were told to be at the dock again at 12:00 and indeed at midday a small speedboat showed up with us on the passenger list.

This was the last leg of the journey and this stretch of the river is much more developed due to the large-scale oil exploitation in this region (Ecuador is an OPEC member). It was a very exciting (but bumpy) ride due to the speed. We stopped along a few oil rigs to pick up some workers and at the end of the afternoon arrived in El Coca!

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