Gateway to Manu and Tambopata — Peru's Amazon where the forest meets the gold-rush frontier
Puerto Maldonado is the capital of Madre de Dios region in southeastern Peru — a frontier river city at the confluence of the Tambopata and Madre de Dios rivers, gateway to two of the world's most biodiverse protected areas: Tambopata National Reserve and Manu Biosphere Reserve. The wider Madre de Dios region contains a higher concentration of bird, mammal, and reptile species per hectare than almost anywhere on earth. The city itself has a gold-rush frontier character — a mix of lodge operators, indigenous communities, conservation researchers, and illegal gold miners.
The Madre de Dios region was largely unknown to the outside world until rubber-tapper expeditions in the 1880s-90s made it a distant annex of the brutal Amazonian rubber economy. Peru established Puerto Maldonado in 1902, named after explorer Faustino Maldonado who drowned in the Madre de Dios rapids. The city became significant again with the discovery of alluvial gold deposits in the 1970s-80s — a gold rush that caused severe deforestation and mercury contamination and continues alongside ecotourism to this day.