A Spanish tourist has recounted how an armed gang calling themselves “river pirates” robbed her and her family aboard a boat travelling down the Amazon River in Peru.
In a video on TikTok, one of the tourists, Elisabet de la Almudena, said she experienced the “worst day of her life” on 14 May, when four armed assailants holding pistols and one machine gun boarded the boat she was travelling on with her parents and six-year-old daughter. She said the gunmen forced them to open banking apps on their phones and empty their accounts.
“We contracted a family tour, a sightseeing tour,” she said, adding that they were taken further into the jungle after being robbed and were left stranded there for an hour.
“The hardest part was when these people boarded the boat. Through mobile phone applications, they asked us to take the money out of our accounts and transfer it to one of their accounts, otherwise they would not leave,” she added.
De la Almudena said there were about 14 Spanish tourists on the boat, including children and elderly people, who were all released shaken but unharmed after the ordeal.
She said that a local family found them stranded and helped them get back to Iquitos, where they arrived in the early hours of the morning.
She also alleged that the tour company, Canopy Tours Iquitos, did not have an emergency protocol or a GPS unit on the boat.
In a statement on Tuesday, the tour operator Canopy Tours Iquitos said the incident was beyond its control and “was reported immediately to authorities”.
“From the beginning, we activated our emergency protocols, offered our assistance to the affected group and have been actively cooperating with the investigation,” the statement said.
The company also said it was improving its security measures in response to the incident, including GPS monitoring, and was working more closely with the River Police.
The company and Spanish embassy in Peru could not be immediately contacted by the Guardian.
The risk of armed robbery is low in Peru, however, the US state department has warned its citizens to “exercise increased caution due to crime, civil unrest, and the risk of kidnapping” in certain parts of the country.
