You need a lot of patience here.

Our plan was to take a boat from Iquitos to Pebas, and then a peke-peke (long canoe with motor) to our destination, Brillo Nuevo. The first leg of our journey would be quick, because we would be heading down river. An 8 hour ride, they told us. Here´s how 8 turned into 42:

July 1
4pm:
Victor is a Peruvian field botanist that is accompanying us in the field. He´s also our go-to guy. Whenever we have a question, Victor has an answer.
Victor, when will the boat leave? Around 6. Maybe 7.
We arrive early to grab a cabin. Most people sleep in hammocks on the boat, but we need a cabin for our 9 bags of equipment. Two of the bags are big enough to store me comfortably.
5pm:
We take too many pictures. Victor´s on the right. And I´m the gringa (which roughly translates to sack of money with pale white skin).

5:40pm:
Campbell and I are exploring the lumber yard and drinking beer in a nameless bar at port. We´re talking about hitchhiking (Campbell has hitchhiked across the country 3 times) when I begin to worry that we will miss the boat.

5:45pm:
Oh no! The boat is leaving!
It´s already two meters away from shore! Two meters of grimy water!
Campbell and I consider wading through the river, but fortunately decide to hop on our moving boat via a neghboring boat.
No one else is freaking out. Victor is still on his cell, pacing around the beach. Silly gringos.
5:55pm:
"I think we are actually going to leave on time at 6," Campbell says. I nod. The boat is back at shore. Looks like the porters are almost done loading the boat with fish, bananas and ice.

7pm:
Victor is still on his cell, and the boat is still at port.
7:10pm:
The porters are now removing ice from the boat. Huh.
8:30pm:
The port captain says that the boat has too much weight on it. It appears to be sinking.
The porters remove more boxes of ice.
10pm:
The captain orders everyone to find a lifejacket. I snatch one off a beam above the hammocks, but Victor and Campbell do not find theirs in time. There aren´t enough lifejackets.
We are still at port.
Campbell, Victor and I discuss what to do if the boat sinks. Victor says it would be best to relax and let the current take you to shore.
11pm:
I´m sleeping. In brief moments of consciousness, I feel wobbly. The boat must be moving!

July 2
1am:
No more wobbly. Why has the boat stopped?
1:30am:
The boat has a hole in the bottom. That´s what they realized once they removed all that ice. We aren´t any closer to our destination. We are at a repair station.

(By this point you are getting tired of reading this. It´s so long-winded! When will it stop?! That´s exactly how I felt on the boat, except I couldn´t scroll down to find out the ending.)

9am:
I wake up with a sore throat, stuffed nose, and a ringing headache. Locals blame my sickness on the humidity. Stupid river.
I meet a friend:

10am:
Victor gets a message from his university. He has to go defend his thesis, and he has to do it immediately. So he won´t be accompanying us. He suggests his friend Julie instead.
Bye Victor. Lucky you, you get to leave this boat.
We are still at the repair station.
11:30am:
The port captain inspects the boat (again) and deems it unsafe (again). We leave the repair station and return to our original port. This boat won´t be leaving, they tell us. We must now lug our body bags onto a different boat.
12:30pm:
Our new boat is expected to leave at 8pm. I do not have such expectations.
1pm:
We eat a two-course lunch, with drink, for $1.50, and then get a $7 hotel room for the afternoon.
1:30pm:
I pass out on the bed for three hours. When I wake up, it feels as if someone is sawing my head. F****** river!
2pm:
Campbell meets Julie, and learns that Julie is Victor´s wife. We have now effectively exchanged Julie for Victor. Hello, Julie.
6pm:
Our original boat leaves. We are in the hotel room.
7pm:
Back on board the new boat. Why is this boat so dark?

(Stay with me now, we´re almost there.)

7:30pm:
There´s no electricity. It needs to be fixed. So we wait.
8pm:
We´re not leaving on time, but that was expected.
10pm:
Wobbly again! We´re moving!
10:15pm:
Aaaaaaaaaand... we stop. Time for a quick two hour break. Decided to unload some gasoline. (Try not to ask the obvious question - Why did they load all that gas in the first place?)

July 3
9am:
I´m getting used to this headache. I have accepted this boat.


We were expected to arrive at 8. I´m thinking 11.
9:30am:
I talk to Tim, a (former) engineer of pharmaceutical refridgerators. He´s traveling down the Amazon River for at least a few more weeks. Wow, that´s a lot of boat. (How´d it go, Tim?)
11am:
Ok, I think we´ll get there by noon.
11:30am:
Tim and I are talking. Mid-sentence, I notice that everyone else is eating. We missed our free boat lunch! We go down to the lower deck, and then down to the storage room, and then over five barrels of gasoline, to ask for our styrofoam dishes of yuca, chicken and rice. The lunch lady is chopping onions in a toilet-sized kitchen. She throws the peels overboard.
Noon:
I SEE PEBAS.
Now it´s time for our 4-hour peke-peke ride to our destination, Brillo Nuevo.

(Wow, you made it through. Now that´s commitment.)