/agree with most of the posts here. Spent a week in the Puerto Mandonado area, and it does have better wildlife than the Iquitos area. That said, I spent 2 weeks in the Iquitos/Nauta areas. This year I am choosing to return to the Iquitos/Nauta area again (3 weeks!) as a) the city itself has far more to offer than Puerto Maldonado, the numer of expeditions that are reachable (furthur out than Puerto Maldonado though) is greater, the ability to hop on a high speed to get to the tri-border of Santa Rosa (peru)/Tabitinga (Brazil)/Leticia(Colombia), the depth of some of the expeditions being greater (as well as the Amazon itself and it's tributaries are much bigger this far down river,) and the fact that my Shaman (Don Juan Tangoa Paima of the Yacu Puma healing center) resides in IQT.

I do NOT reccomend using the tri-border as a base, as prices for similarly priced services are much higher there as the Peruvian economy is the one where the $$ goes farther, and the Peruvian town of Santa Rosa does not drive the local prices, but rather Brazil and Colombia do. In fact, currency is pretty much useable without exchange in Leticia/Tabatinga, but they like American Express, they don't take the Nuevo Sol.

Puerto Maldonado, Iquitos, and Leticia all have airports served by LAN, although the Leticia one is a LAN Colombia vs the others which are Lan Peru. Puerto Maldonado was a flight from Cusco (where I ran into George Takai on his honeymoon on the flight.) They also fly it from LIM. Iquitos is severd from LIM, and Bogota serves the Leticia airport.

In Iquitos, I found that walking the few blocks around the Plaza de Armas for tour agencies will get you a far better price on short notice than booking in advance, as they are trying to make their "thin" bookings profitable or break even. For example I booked a 5 day tour which included the tip to Nauta via car, 3 hour boat ride to our lodge, 2 nights in the lodge, 2 nights a further 3 hour ride up river to a families camp, where we spend another 2 nights there in misquitto netting covered hammocks, and return all for a little under $300. This trip was 100% customizable by the 4 of us on it, choosing how many nights to spend where. I was the 1st person to book it, 36 hours before dptr, and they added 3 additional people over the next 24 hours to make it a 4 man group. We had (2) guides with us at all times (only 1 spoke English, but the other could sure climb trees to pluch the wildlife out of the branches to bring it down to our dugout for closer view, then he would climb back up and replace the animals) with a support staff of another 2 people at the lodge.