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Once known as the Garden City, the ramshackle settlement of TINGO MARIA , 130km north of Huanuco, lies at the foot of the Bella Durmiente mountain, where, according to legend, the lovesick Princess Nunash awaits the waking kiss of Kunyaq, the sorcerer. These days the town welcomes few travellers due to the proliferation of the cocaine trade that grew up in the surrounding regions during the 1980s, and the gang and terrorist control of such large-scale illicit operations. Despite its striking setting - 670m above sea level on the forested eastern slopes of the Andes, amid the fecund tropical climate of the ceja de selva - Tingo Maria, today, is a tatty, ugly town, on which the ravages of Western civilization have left their mark. Dominated by sawmills and plywood factories financed by multinational corporations, and with a booming trade in stolen goods and cocaine, the town displays all the symbols of relative affluence, but the tin roofs and forest of TV aerials spattered across the township betray the poverty of the majority of its inhabitants. There's little for visitors to see, beyond the rather sorry zoo and botanical gardens (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; free) attached to the university on the edge of town, or - about 14km out of town - the Cueva de las Lechuzas (Owls' Cave), the vast, picturesque and dark home to a flock of rare nocturnal parrots (you'll need a torch). If you're here in the last week of July, you'll coincide with Tingo Maria's major fiesta period - a lively and fun time to be be in town, but on no account leave your baggage unattended then.
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