Travel to Colombia, Leticia, Rio Yavari, Amazon.

We arrived to the place of 3 frontiers before lunch time and were dropped at the bank of the Amazon on the Peruvian side, we think. It was hard to tell because there was a lot going on around us and to get anywhere we had to take a water taxi anyway. We negotiated a price with a boatmen and he took us first to the immigration office so that we could be stamped out of Peru. As it happens water is too low for the barca to go there so you have to really deal with the extra cost. It was not much anyway and the guy waited for us to take us to Leticia, port of entry to Colombia…ah, finally.

People say it is not pretty but we found it rather nice. The streets are nicely coordinated; it is very green and very, very lively. It is hard to say how, but this place is so much different to Peru. It is probably not solely thanks to the people, as this place was a dispute between Colombia and Peru for decades, hence a mix of cultures live there, but maybe the ‘inland’ Colombians, who relocated here, brought with
from the viewpointthem the vibe, the colors and the music of Colombia. The salsa music was to be heard everywhere and people were obviously in festive spirit. As we almost forgot about Christmas we also forgot that it was the New Years Eve time the next day. We really wanted to move on to Puerto Narino but decided that Leticia might have more going on.

We were shocked with the prices of rooms that were quoted to us. We know, we know, it was a holiday season but still 30$ for a crappy room was a little bit too much. We walked around for ages trying all the budget hotels and when we were about to give up we found a nice private room with a kitchen use for 35,000COP/18$ which was ok. Not the first time that our patience paid out. We went for a stroll to check food prices in town and then to the airport to get stamped in (they wanted 7$ for a taxi). That is another inconvenient thing about this border crossing. None of the immigration points are on the way or in town. We walked the 3,5km to the Airport Immigration office as apparently staying
in the junglein the country for 4 days without stamp is illegal….

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