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I got a private room at the Hobo Hideout for my first night back in Iquitos. The room itself was dull with no exterior windows, but it would be dark and quiet. I showered in the communal shower and got the first layer of dirt and mud off, but I desperately wanted to wash my clothing. Everything I had with me was dirty. I decided to buy a new outfit so I could wash all my dirty clothing at once.

It took me about twenty minutes to walk to the market. On the way I ran into Wil and Grazyna. We stopped to talk for a minute and made plans to rendezvous for dinner.

The market was large and busy. It smelled like a stockyard. Stalls selling raw fruits and vegetables as well as unrefrigerated animal parts were intermingled with cheap electronics and cleaning products. There was a stall with live animals for sale as well. Tiny baby monkeys were tied to a pole next to turtles, caymans, a toucan, and an anteater.

The Behlen Market has two parts. The upper part is a pretty standard Peruvian street market: covered street stalls crowd the pavement between the permanent buildings housing smalls shops. But the lower part of the market is a “floating market.”

Lower Behlen is the Amazon’s take on Venice. Built on the river, canoes traverse the waterways between buildings and crude plank scaffolding takes the place of sidewalk. These walkways are narrow, often a single plank wide, and without railings making it harrowing to pass a pedestrian coming in the opposite direction. There were shops and vendors here, but there was housing as well, and clothing hung from lines stretched across the canals. It was charming and bohemian.

I stopped at a “T” intersection in the middle of a canal to take a photo. As I snapped the picture a teenage boy who had been walking a short distance behind me lept from over my left shoulder and grabbed my camera. He wrenched it from my hands and started to run down the path to my right. I pulled back on the wrist-strap and yanked the camera back into my possession. He continued to run down the path which went under a nearby building. I had the camera, but my adrenaline was pumping and I gave chase.

My ill advised attempt to apprehend the thief ended quickly and violently. My Peruvian nemesis was a head shorter than I and where he cleared the building without ducking, I ran headfirst into the lower edge of the concrete structure. I heard a pop and saw stars. I struggled to keep my balance on the narrow plank as my head swam and warm blood trickled down my face.

Nearby a family was sitting out and cooking their lunch. Obviously distressed at what they had witnessed they sat me down spoke to me in rapid Spanish I could not understand. One of the men went into the house and came out with a clean new towel that he offered to me. My head was clearing and I refused. I had some tissue in my back pocket and I used that to staunch the bleeding, not wanting to soil their new towel.

I was a little embarrassed and I wanted to get back to my hostel to assess the damage. One of the women walked me back through the lower market and up to the street where she hailed me a motorkart. I was fully capable of finding my own way back, but I appreciated the kind gesture.

Back at the hotel I examined my forehead. I had a deep crescent shaped gash about an inch wide in my forehead. It was deep and looked like it could take at least a few stitches. I washed and disinfected it with hand-sanitizer. I looked at it again. I did not want to go to the hospital. I travel with superglue finding that it provides a better barrier against infection than band-aides. It has the added benefit of disinfecting as it seals a wound. I had never used it on anything this large, but I decided to give it a shot. I held the gash closed with one hand and applied the superglue. I had to continue to hold my forehead for several minutes while the glue set, but once it was finished the wound stayed closed. It seemed to have worked fairly well. Pleased with my field surgery, I laid down to rest.