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Puerto Maldonado 01: History and arrival

Rigid grid pattern - rubber - game hunters - timber, oil, gold - arrival by airplane or by bus

Map with the
              positions of Lima and Puerto Maldonado   Puerto
              Maldonado: Travel office, telephone office and book store
              with mototaxi   Puerto
              Maldonado, sight on the river Madre de Dios

presented by Michael Palomino (2008)

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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
biggerMap 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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
Puerto Maldonado, Plaza de Armas

Motocars in
                Puerto Maldonado
Motocars in Puerto Maldonado

Arrival by airplane

The entrance of the airport of
                Puerto Maldonado
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
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).
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Picture sources

-- map with Lima and Puerto Maldonado: http://www.infotravelperu.com/english/villes.php3?idville=173
-- map with Puerto Maldonado with rivers: http://www.peru-explorer.com/corto_maltes.htm

-- port of Puerto Maldonado: http://www.ballofdirt.com/entries/14054/233371.html
-- travel office and book store with mototaxi:
http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Peru/Madre-de-Dios/Puerto-Maldonado/Amazon-Rainforest/blog-193860.html
-- alley: http://www.viajeros.com/diario-2281.html;
http://www.viajeros.com/modules.php?name=Galeria&op=ver_foto&pid=8294
-- sight on the river Madre de Dios:
http://www.viajeros.com/modules.php?name=Galeria&op=ver_foto&pid=8295
-- Plaza de Armas: http://www.songtranslator.net/wiki/wiki.php?title=Fiebre_del_caucho
-- road with mototaxis and motorbikes: http://www.andaduras.com/peru/peru_selva.htm
-- truck with wood crossing the river Madre de Dios: http://www.epochtimes.de/articles/2007/12/11/210427.html
-- truck with wood on road Iñapari-Puerto Maldonado: http://flickr.com/photos/ericrstoner/763506775/
-- entrance of the airport of Puerto Maldonado: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=350878&page=7
-- airplane of Aero Condor to Puerto Maldonado:
http://realtravel.com/puerto_maldonado-photos-p1161030-1748557.html
-- market of Puerto Maldonado: http://www.flickr.com/photos/regalim/1694281844/
-- motos in Puerto Maldonado: http://www.projetorumo.com/page4.aspx
-- floating dredge for gold: http://www.parkswatch.org/parkprofiles/pdf/tabs_eng.pdf


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