Iquitos, the city in which Belén Market can be found, is already a unique place, being a city deep in the Amazon only reachable by boat or plane it has a wild-westesque feel to it, due I suppose to its remoteness and proximity to the very wild jungle. It's hot, very hot, and probably the most humid environment I've encountered.
Belén offers no comfort to anyone used to the neatly lined shelves of a supermarket or even the markets you can find in any UK town or city. Instead, it shows how Iquitos, her people and the forest are entwined, living and breathing, chaotically together.
In Iquitos, solid ground gives way, and the river Itaya shifts in and out with the seasons. When the waters rise, the streets become canals, and the people of Belén adapt. Their homes, their lives, start to float. This is not a postcard picture ready 'Venice of the Amazon', but a profound architecture of resilience, a life lived in constant, intimate negotiation with the force of the water. The canoes are not for tourists, they are the school bus, the delivery truck, the lifeline to the neighbour's door. This is a society that has no choice but to move with nature rather than against it.
To arrive in Belen Market (Iquitos, Peru), for me, was to enter a different world. With Bill, my guide who has spent his life in Iquitos and the Amazon, I walked through its mouth and entered this new realm.
(These bottles are filled with potions, traditions and spells to cure every ailment and vice)