Quistococha Tourist Park

Quistococha is the local day out for Iquitos: a blackwater lagoon with a made sand beach, a path around the shore and a municipal zoo holding animals of the region. The collection includes jaguar, ocelot, tapir, giant anteater, manatee, caiman, macaws and anacondas, along with an aquarium building and ponds where paiche, the giant Amazon fish, are bred and fed in front of visitors. There is a viewing tower over the water, pedal boats, food stalls selling juane and grilled fish, and on Sundays a substantial crowd of families from the city. It works better as an afternoon in a park than as a wildlife experience.

What you actually see

• The paiche ponds - the giant Amazon fish, fed at set times in front of visitors.
• The regional enclosures - jaguar, tapir, anteater, manatee and caiman from the surrounding forest.
• The lagoon beach - imported sand along a black-water lake, swimmable and busy at weekends.
• The viewing tower - a platform over the water looking across the lagoon to the forest.

When to go

Weekday mornings if you want the paths quiet; Sundays are the local family day and the beach fills up completely. Rain falls in every month and usually in the afternoon, so mornings are the safer bet. Feeding times for the paiche and some enclosures are fixed, so ask at the gate on arrival rather than wandering and hoping.

Honest expectations

It is a municipal zoo and it shows: several enclosures are small and bare by any modern standard, and visitors who care about animal conditions will find parts of it uncomfortable. Maintenance is uneven and signage is patchy. The lagoon water is dark and the beach is crowded and littered at weekends. Heat and mosquitoes are constant.

Nearby

Iquitos and the Belén market are twenty minutes north, and the Nauta road runs south.