It is said that the Amazon forest is the only place that gives one the sensation of witnessing the dawn of time. Thousands of visitors are drawn to the diversity of the area's forests and rivers, arriving in the city of Puerto Maldonado, the capital of the department of Madre de Dios, ready to set out on a journey filled with excitement and discovery.
Founded July 10, 1902, the city was named after explorer Faustino Maldonado, who paddled up the Madre de Dios River to the point where it comes together with the Tambopata River.
Puerto Maldonado is the gateway to three national parks in the Peruvian Amazon featuring an extraordinary diversity of wild species of flora and fauna: Tambopata-Candamo, Bahuaja-Sonene and Pampas del Heath.
The Manu National Park is the largest protected natural area of its kind in Peru. Spreading across the departments of Cuzco and Madre de Dios, the park covers the entire Manu River watershed. The best option to arrive to Manu is via Cuzco.
A boat ride down the Tambopata or Madre de Dios Rivers takes one to the Bahuaja-Sonene (Tambopata-Heath) National Park, while the Heath River leads to the Pampas del Heath, a unique savanna area wedged in the heart of Peru's tropical rainforest and a haven for unique animal species.
The Tambopata River leads to the Tambopata Candamo Reserved Area, which is famous for featuring the greatest diversity of species of mammals, trees, insects and birds on Earth.
Festivals in Madre de Dios, such as San Juan in June or Tourism and Ecological Week are good reasons to taste regional dishes and take a refreshing dip in Lake Sandoval or go fishing on Lake Valencia, while visitors can spot countless species of plants, fish and fauna in general.
Puerto Maldonado is located in the confluence of the rivers Tambopata and Madre de Dios; it is characterized by their notable delay in the economic development, due to the lack of appropriate communication roads. Its population, in its majority is conformed by native jungle tribes, dedicated to tasks of extraction of natural resources, wood, fruits, gold, etc., with limited production means.
However, the difficult conditions of life in the area have allowed them to be and conserve one of the virgin natural scenarios in the whole planet, having parks and natural reservations of Amazon forests, of singular characteristics in the world.
It is the best destination for the lovers of the nature and biodiversity, and also for those who look for adventure, in paradisiacal places, of exuberant vegetation, in which infinity of animal species inhabit, many of them, only exist in these forests.
The special characteristic of the jungle of Madre de Dios department is due to masses of cold air coming from the southern Atlantic, during the months of June, and they originate an abrupt descent of the temperature, reaching 5°C or less. This eventual meteorological phenomenon is denominated, in the area, as the "friaje".
This situation, in the evolutionary process during hundred-thousand years, originated the disappearance of many species of reptiles, because of being of cold blood, and when existing less predators, and the adaptation of others, it is already allowed the subsistence and evolution of species missing in other places of the earth, inclusive in the Amazon area. Existence of animal species and unique vegetables in their gender.
These forests still have many places to discover and also many unknown species alive for the science.
Aborigines
In the virgin forests of Madre de Dios department, inhabit jungle tribes, as the Ese'eja, Machiguengas, the Huarayos, the Mashcos, the Arasaris (practically exterminated), the Huachiparis, the Shirenis, the Iņaparis, the Amaricaris, almost all incorporated to the civilization by evangelical missionaries, but they conserve much of their ancestral customs.
This population has many myths and legends, some of them mystical; there is a great diffusion of the folkloric and quack medicine on the base of the great quantity of medicinal plants that exist.
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