Puerto Maldonado

Puerto Maldonado is a city in Southeastern Peru in the Amazon rainforest, west of the Bolivian border where the Tambopata and Madre de Dios River, a tributary of the Amazon River, intersect.  Puerto Maldonado is the capital of the Madre de Dios Region.  Nearby are the Manú National Park, which include several oxbow lakes and clay licks, home to hundreds of birds including macaws that feed on clay to detoxify their systems.

Puerto Maldonado is in the tropical Amazon Basin. The climate is hot and humid year round. The average annual temperature is 26°C (79°F) with August and September being the hottest. Annual rainfall exceeds 1,000 millimetres (3.3 ft).  The wet, rainy season is from October to April.

The main part of the town is located on a slightly elevated area that does not normally flood during the wet season. Road travel often becomes impossible during this time. The “dry” season occurs between June and August.  A common phenomena known locally as a “surazo” or “friaje” occurs when polar winds blow in from the mountainous south. The temperature will drop to as low as 8 °C (46 °F) for several days.

Why these attractions in Puerto Maldonado?

The dizzying level of biological diversity in Tambopata could be due to the variety of landscapes, physiography, geological formations, climactic differences and areas where different life zones come together.  All this would create diversified eco-systems, both for flora and fauna. It is a kind of self-reproducing natural game of dialectics. The process started in the Pleistocene Era, and its development features the characteristics of the regions that make up the area, and the characteristics of the life forms that exist there.