from: Dilwyn Jenkins: The rough
guide to Peru; Rough Guides, New York, London, Delhi; 6th edition
September 2006; www.roughguides.com
Puerto Maldonado founded by
Fitzcarrald
Madre de Dios [department] is centered on the fast-growing river town
of Puerto Maldonado, near the Bolivian border, supposedly founded by
legendary explorer and rubber baron Fitzcarrald. The town, which
extends a tenuous political and economic hold over the vast department,
has a fast-growing population of over 30,000. The streets are laid out
in rigid grid pattern, not emanating from a central plaza as in most
Peruvian cities, but stretching out from the port and Tambopata
riverfront, towards the airport and forest edge. These days it has
(p.541)
a busy city center buzzing with motorbikes and chicha music. The port
area offers an otherwise rare glimpse of the river, which is largely
shielded from view by the ever-growing rows of wooden houses and lumber
yards. The main avenue, León Velarde, combines the usual bars and
restaurants with pool halls, hammock shops and offices. The feel you
get here is of a rapidly growing, but still intimate and small city,
whose young people spend endless evenings sitting row upon row in front
of the web-connected glare of computer monitors, in hopes of procuring
lucrative careers in the future (p.542).
Puerto Maldonado: rigid grid
pattern
 Map
of the center
of Puerto Maldonado with it's grid pattern and tourist indications |
Map with the position of Puerto Maldonado with the rivers Madre de
Dios, Piedras, Tambopata and the Sandoval Lake |
The saga of Fitzcarrald
Fitzcarrald (often mistakenly called Fitzcarraldo) is associated with
the founding of Puerto Maldonado, but he actually died some twelve
years before the event, though his story is relevant to the development
of this region. While working rubber on the Río Urubamba, Fitzcarrald
evidently caught the gold bug after hearing rumours from local
Ashaninka and Machiguenga Indians of an Inca fort protecting vast
treasures, possibly around the Río Purus. Setting out along the
Mishagua, a tributary of the Río Urubamba, he managed to reach its
source, and from there walked over the ridge to a new watershed which
he took to be the Purus, though it was in fact the Río Cashpajali, a
tributary of the Río Manu.
Leaving men to clear a path, he returned to Iquitos, and in 1884 came
back to the region on a boat called La
Contamana. He took the boat apart, and with the aid of over a
thousand Ashaninka and other Indians, carried it across to the "Purus".
But, as he cruised down, attacked by tribes at several points,
Fitzcarrald slowly began to realize that the river was not the Purus -
a fact confirmed when he eventually bumped into a Bolivian rubber
collector.
Though he'd ended up on the wrong river, Fitzcarrald had discovered a
link connecting the two great Amazonian watershed. In Europe, the
discovery was heralded as a great step forward in the exploration of
South America, but for Peru it meant more rubber, a quicker route for
its export, and the beginning of the end for Madre de Dios' indigenous
tribes. Puerto Maldonado was founded in 1902, and as exploitation of
the region's rubber peaked, so too was there an increase in population
of workers and merchants, with Madre de Dios ultimately becoming a
department of Peru in 1912. German director Werner Herzog thought this
historical episode a fitting subject for celluloid, and in 1982
directed the epic Fitzcarraldo.
History of Puerto Maldonado:
rubber - game hunters - timber exploitation - oil and gold damage
Alley in Puerto Maldonado
A remote settlement even for Perú, PUERTO MALDONADO is a frontier
colonist town with strong links to the Cusco region and a great fervour
[passion] for bubbly jungle chicha
music. With an economy based on unsustainable gold extraction and
highly sustainable Brazil-nut gathering from the rivers and forests of
Madre de Dios, it has grown enormously over the last twenty years from
a small, laid-back outpost of civilization to a busy market town. Today
it's the thriving, safe (and fairly expensive) capital of a region that
feels very much on the threshold [borderline] of major upheavals, with
a rapidly developing tourist industry.
Market of Puerto Maldonado
Over a hundred years ago it was rubber that established Puerto
Maldonado at the beginning of the twentieth century. During the 1920s
came the game hunters, who dominated the economy of the region, and
after them, mainly in the 1960s, the exploiters of mahagony and cedar
trees arrived - leading to the construction of Boca Manu airstrip, just
before the oil companies moved in during the 1970s. Whilst
gold-mining and logging [timber exploitation] - both mostly illegal
frontier businesses - keep the town buzzing today.
A truck (Volvo) with robbed wood from the rain forest is crossing the
river Madre de Dios near Puerto Maldonado
There is the question why truck firms like Volvo are delivering trucks
for the destruction of the rain forest.
The truck firms could stop the destruction of the rain forest!
A truck with robbed wood from the rain forest on the road between
Iñapari and Puerto Maldonado
The truck firms could stop the destruction of the rain forest!
Gold floating dredge damaging heavily the riverbeds and poisoning the
river with mercury.
Most of the townspeople, riding coolly around on Honda motorbikes, are
second-generation colonos,
Puerto Maldonado, road with mototaxis and motorbikes
but there's a constant stream of new and hopeful arrivals - rich and
poor from all parts of South America, and even the occasional gang from
the US. The lure [seduction], inevitably, is gold (p.544).
Puerto Maldonado, Plaza de Armas
Motocars in Puerto Maldonado
Arrival by airplane
The entrance of the airport of Puerto Maldonado
If you arrive by plane, the blast of hot, humid air you get the moment
you step out onto the airport's runway is an instant reminder that this
is the Amazon Basin. Aero Continente operate daily jets from Lima via
Cusco, while Aero Condor and Aero Santander offer cheaper, daily
propeller planes from Cusco (p.545).
Airplane of Aero Condor for Puerto Maldonado
[The airline situation is changing every year, so ask at the travel
office].
Military Grupo Ocho [Group 8] planes also jet in from Cusco several
times weekly, but you need to check their schedule at Cusco airport.
There are also two or three flights weekly to other jungle destinations
in Madre de Dios, such as Iberia; check with travel agents or the new
airline companies on arrival in Peru (p.546).
Flights
-- from Puerto Maldonado to Cusco are several daily, a flight of 1 hour
-- from Puerto Maldonado to Iberia are 2-3 weekly, a flight of 30 min.
-- from Puerto Maldonado to Lima is daily, a flight of 2 hours
-- from Puerto Maldonado to Trujillo is daily, a flight of 2 hours
(p.568).
Unless you're being picked up as part of an organized tour, airport transfer is simplest and
coolest by motokar, costing around $2.50 for the otherwise very hot
eight-kilometer walk (p.546).
However you get here, you have to go through a yellow fever vaccination
checkpoint at Puerto Maldonado's small but clean, modern and
air-conditioned airport (T. 082-571533), where there's also a tourist
information kiosk (www.regionmadrededios.gob.pe) and artesanía shops
(p.547).
Arrival by bus or by truck
There are several buses from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado per week. The
trip needs 2 to 6 days (p.568).
Most of the trucks from Cusco arrive after a tough 500-kilometer
journey at Puerto Maldonado main market on Calle Ernesto Rivero, or
block 19 of La Unión, also by the market. It's a laborious, three- to
ten-day journey down from the glacial highlands [along the Río
Inambari], depending on how much it's raining; after passing into the ceja de selva, the muddy track
winds its slippery way through dense tropical vegetation, via the small
settlement at Quincemil. The worst period is generally between December
and March (p.546).
Airlines in Puerto Maldonado
Airlines TANS
[Jirón] León de Velarde 153
Grupo Ocho [Group 8]
[Jirón] Dos de Mayo,block 6 (no telephone).
