Puerto Maldonado, Peru Hotels, Vacations, Tourism

A remote settlement even for Peru, PUERTO MALDONADO is a frontier colonist town with strong links to the Cusco region and a great fervour for bubbly jungle chicha music. With an economy based on gold-panning and 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, it has become the thriving, safe (and fairly expensive) capital of a region that feels very much on the threshold of major upheavals, with a rapidly developing tourist industry. It was rubber, however, that led to the … more »