Explore The jungle
A large, forested region, with a manic climate (usually searingly hot and humid, but with sudden cold spells – friajes – between June and August, due to icy winds coming down from the Andean glaciers), the southern selva has only been systematically explored since the 1950s.
Named after the broad river that flows through the heart of the southern jungle, the still relatively wild departamento of MADRE DE DIOS is centred on the fast-growing river town of Puerto Maldonado, near the Bolivian border and just 180m above sea level. The town extends a tenuous political and economic hold over the vast departamento and has a fast-growing population of over 40,000, but most visitors come for the nearby wildlife, either in the strictly protected Manu Biosphere Reserve – still essentially an expedition zone – and the cheaper and easy-to-access Reserva Nacional Tambopata, chiefly visited by groups staying at lodges. Both offer some of the most luxuriant jungle and richest flora and fauna in the world. Another massive protected area, the Parque Nacional Bahuaja-Sonene, is adjacent to Tambopata.
Less accessible than the protected zones, but nevertheless offering travellers staying in Puerto Maldonado a taste of the rainforest, are Lago Sandoval and the huge expanse of Lago Valencia, both great wildlife spots east along the Río Madre de Dios and close to the Bolivian border. At the least, you’re likely to spot a few caimans and the strange hoatzin bird, and if you’re very lucky, larger mammals such as capybara, tapir or, less likely, jaguar – and at Valencia, you can fish for piranha. A little further southeast lies the Pampas del Heath, the only tropical grassland within Peru.
The Río Madre de Dios itself is fed by two main tributaries, the Río Manu and the Río Alto Madre de Dios, which roll off the Paucartambo Ridge just north of Cusco. West of this ridge, the Río Urubamba watershed starts and its river flows on past Machu Picchu and down to the jungle area around the town of Quillabamba, before entering lowland Amazon beyond the rapids of Pongo de Mainique.
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The indigenous groups of Madre de Dios
The indigenous groups of Madre de Dios
Off the main Madre de Dios waterways, within the system of smaller tributaries and streams, live a variety of different indigenous groups. All are depleted in numbers due to contact with Western diseases and influences, such as pollution of their rivers, environmental destruction by large-scale gold-mining, and new waves of exploration for oil. While some have been completely wiped out over the last twenty years, several have maintained their isolation. These groups have recently come to worldwide attention as the international press have highlighted the plight of “the uncontacted”.
If you go anywhere in the jungle, especially on an organized tour, you’re likely to stop off at a tribal village for at least half an hour or so, and the more you know about the people, the more you’ll get out of the visit. Downstream from Puerto Maldonado, the most populous indigenous group are the Ese Eja tribe (often wrongly, and derogatorily, called “Huarayos” by colonos). Originally semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers, the Ese Eja were well-known warriors who fought the Incas and, later on, the Spanish expedition of Alvarez Maldonado – eventually establishing fairly friendly and respectful relationships with both. Under Fitzcarrald’s reign, they suffered greatly through the engaño system, which tricked them into slave labour through credit offers on knives, machetes, pots and pans, which then took years, or in some cases a lifetime, to work off. Today they live in fairly large communities and have more or less abandoned their original bark-cloth robes in favour of shorts and T-shirts.
Upstream from Puerto Maldonado live several tribes, known collectively (again, wrongly and derogatorily) as the “Mashcos” but actually comprising at least five separate linguistic groups – the Huachipaeri, Amarakaeri, Sapitoyeri, Arasayri and Toyeri. All typically use long bows – over 1.5m – and lengthy arrows, and most settlements will also have a shotgun or two these days, since less time can be dedicated to hunting when they are panning for gold or working timber for colonos. Traditionally, they wore long bark-cloth robes and had long hair, and the men often stuck eight feathers into the skin around their lips, making them look distinctively fierce and cat-like. Many Huachipaeri and Amarakaeri groups are now actively engaging with the outside world on their own terms, and some of their young men and women have gone through university education and subsequently returned to their native villages.
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Madre de Dios’s gold
Madre de Dios’s gold
Every rainy season the swollen rivers of Madre de Dios deposit a heavy layer of gold dust along their banks, and those who have been quick enough to stake claims on the best stretches have made substantial fortunes. In such areas there are thousands of unregulated miners, using large front-loader earth-moving machines, destroying a large section of the forest, and doing so very quickly.
Gold lust is not a new phenomenon here – the gold-rich rivers have brought Andean Indians and occasional European explorers to the region for centuries. The Inca Emperor Tupac Yupanqui is known to have discovered the Río Madre de Dios, naming it the Amarymayo (“serpent river”), and may well have sourced some of the Empire’s gold from around here.
