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Puerto Maldonado
The inland port city of Puerto Maldonado lies at the meeting point of the Madre de Dios and Tambopata rivers. The capital of the department of Madre de Dios is a rough-and-tumble town with 46,000 people and nary a four-wheeled vehicle in sight, but with hundreds of motorized two- and three-wheeled motorbikes jockeying for position on its few paved streets.
The city is named for two explorers who ventured into the region 300 years apart: Spanish conquistador Juan Álvarez de Maldonado passed through in 1566; Peruvian explorer Faustino Maldonado explored the still-wild area in the 1860s, never completing his expedition, drowning in the nearby Madeira River. Rubber barons founded this youngster of Peruvian cities in 1912, and its history has been a boom-or-bust roller-coaster ride ever since. The collapse of the rubber industry in the 1930s gave way to decades of dormancy ended by the discovery of gold in the 1970s and the opening of an airport 10 years later.
Puerto Maldonado bills itself as the "Biodiversity Capital of the World," and makes the best jumping-off point for visiting the Tambopata National Reserve sector of Peru's Amazon rain forest. Few travelers spend any time in the city, heading from the airport directly to the municipal docks, where they board boats to their respective jungle lodges. Still, Puerto Maldonado has a handful of decent hotels. And this is the only place to use an ATM machine, cash a traveler's check, or log on to the Internet.
Getting Here & Around
It's fun to get around town in Puerto Maldonado's fleet of Honda Motokar taxis, semi-open three-wheeled motorized vehicles with room for two passengers in the back seat. Every motorbike in town also provides taxi service. You may define that as "fun" or "danger." Hold on for dear life, and don't expect a helmet.
