Its a crazy thing, but all flights out of Iquitos are either VERY early in the morning or late at night. And by early I mean 4:30am which is truly a time when I should be either alseep or dancing, but definitely not waiting in an airport queue.
I do love the reason for this silly hour. The airport is next to the rubbish tip where a million scruffy turkey vultures poke about in Iquitos´ rubbish during the day. The great fear is that if planes fly in the daylight hours, a low flying vulture will be sucked into the engine & cause the plane to fall out of the sky. It has allegedly happened previously in Peru near the jungle town of Pucallpa....TANS flight 204 crashed in Aug 2005 killing 50 or so passengers. This wasn't the first TANS disaster & it was a very dodgy airline controlled by the Peruvian airforce...say no more! TANS has fortunately been grounded ever since.
So rubbish tips next to airports. What's the big deal, why hasn't someone suggested moving the rubbish tip somewhere else, & then there'd be no more turkey vultures, no more plane crashes, & we would all get to sleep in.
