A caiman lizard keeps watch in the Amazon basin

If you want to get hot, sticky and up close and personal with some serious jungle action, Iquitos is the place. It's located almost as deep into the Amazon as you can get, 3000 kilometres from the mouth of the Amazon River.

You can't reach Iquitos by road. The only way in is by air or water and the jungle pushes in like a sweating green beast on all sides.

Originally founded as a Jesuit Mission, Iquitos grew during the rubber boom of the early 20th Century still visible in the grandiose Spanish mansions scattered around the port.

Today it's an important lumber shipping port, base camp for many research projects scanning the untouched forest for new medical breakthroughs and the jumping off point for tours of the Amazon jungle.

You can catch a boat downriver to the ex-rubber town of Manuas in Brazil or continue all the way to the coast through over 3000km of green wilderness.

Within Iquitos, the floating township of Belen is worth a visit. Made up of wooden huts built on barges to accommodate floods, it has an open-air market, specializing in natural medicines gathered from the surrounding forest.