Today, June 30, at 4 PM, I’ll be boarding a Flores Hermanos bus at their terminal on Avenida 28 de Julio, here in Lima, Perú, on my way to Cuzco (also Cusco), the capital of the Inca Empire until the time of the Spanish Conquest.  The distance is only about 350 miles, but the bus ride takes 20 hours.  Locals say that this is due to the tortuous roads in the high Andes.  Cuzco stands at an elevation of 11,500 feet.  The daily high and low at this time of the year are about 68º and 34º F (20º and 1º C), so I’ll be doing a little shivering at night.  It’s supposed to be sunny in Cuzco all week, whereas here in Lima, fog and clouds are the rule. 

On the way back, I’ll visit Machu Picchu, another of the cities of the Incas.  I suppose the whole jaunt will take me four or five days.

In January of 2006, I sailed the Amazon River from Belém, a city in the state of Pará, to Manaus, a city in the state of Amazonas, both in Brazil.  The distance is 801 miles and the voyage on the ship Cisne Branco (White Swan) took me 5 days.  Consulting my map of Brazil, reading online and chatting informally with other passengers, I concluded that Manaus was the end of the riparian way.  Actually, I was hoping to find an overland route from Manaus to São Paulo, but no such route exists, so I ended up flying over the Brazilian jungle instead.  I also checked at that time to ascertain that there were buses from Manaus to Caracas, Venezuela, but finally opted to head towards São Paulo instead, with an ultimate destination of Buenos Aires.

I remember specifically searching my map to see if there was a way out of Brazil to the west, and finally gave it up as a lost cause.

Now, just the day before yesterday, I learned that indeed there is passage along the upper Amazon from Iquitos, Perú to Manaus, Brazil, a distance of 914 miles.  The voyage takes 8 days.  Of course, in order to make the voyage, I would have to get a Brazilian visa.  Had I gone from Manaus to Iquitos, in the opposite direction, I could have entered Perú, which requires no visa, without any hassle.  If only I had known!  Sometimes I’m such an idiot!

So now I’m changing my plans.  I had decided to journey to Guayaquil, Ecuador next.  But instead, I’ll seek a Brazilian visa around the first of July.  I had a Brazilian visa earlier, so I suppose I can get another, since enough time has now elapsed. 

The only difficulty is that there are no roads to Iquitos.  It’s the largest city in the world inaccessible to land vehicles.  Only planes and ships reach Iquitos.  If and when I get my Brazilian visa, at a cost of about $120, I’ll fly to Iquitos, which should be fairly cheap, since I’ll be taking off and landing both in Perú, and in Iquitos I’ll book passage to Manaus.  There will also be a layover in Leticia, Colombia.  After spending the 3 months permitted by my Brazilian visa in Manaus, which I love, with its 90º F (32º C) weather every day of the year, I’ll continue to Caracas by bus, with no trouble entering Venezuela, where no visa is necessary.  I want to get to Iquitos a couple of weeks before my Peruvian visa expires, just in case there’s a problem booking passage on the launch, so that I’ll be able to get back to Tumbes, Perú and go on to Guayaquil after all.

Now I’m more excited than I’ve been for a long time.  I just hope that I get the Brazilian visa and book the passage all without any unforeseen difficulties.

This route is also attractive in that thus I’ll be avoiding the terrorist-infested region along the Colombia-Venezuela frontier that I was gritting my teeth about.  I don’t think there’s a problem in Leticia.

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