Spanish TikToker Elisabet de la Almudena has more than 235,000 followers. Most recently, she recounted a shock-inducing incident while taking a boat tour in the Peruvian Amazon. In a 4.5 minute video, she called that day the “worst day” of her life. She had traveled with a group of 14 people, including her parents and her 6-year-old daughter. Their epic adventure started in Iquitos, the world’s largest city not accessible by road and known primarily as a jumping-off point for visitors to the rainforest.
Elisabet shared harrowing accounts of the event. For example, she detailed how the perpetrators employed mobile phone apps to intimidate them into sweating ATM withdrawals from their bank accounts. “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 explained in her video.
Canopy Tours Iquitos, the company that arranged the boat trip, thanked authorities for being alerted to the incident by someone. They stated, “We activated our emergency protocols straight away, offered our assistance to the affected group and have been actively cooperating with the investigation.” Despite these measures, Elisabet felt abandoned, remarking, “We were completely abandoned by the people that were supposed to look after us.”
On May 16, the U.S. Department of State released their quarterly travel advisory update. They made clear that “crime is rampant throughout Peru.” The advisory stresses that crimes such as petty theft, carjackings, muggings, assaults and other violent crimes occur frequently, including during the day. Most of these in-custody incidents have numerous witnesses on hand. This incident is causing major worries about the safety of tourists in key destination areas such as Iquitos.
Elisabet concluded her video by expressing her anguish and hope for others: “I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.” She cautioned that what was supposed to be a family sightseeing mission became a traumatic survival experience. “We contracted a family tour, a sightseeing tour, and we ended up being kidnapped,” she stated.
