The Amazon

The Amazon represents the largest area of virgin jungle on the planet. This territory, which has been inhabited by humankind for thousands of years, has never been fully explored.

The Amazonian ecosystem is extremely bio-diverse. There are thousands of species of both flora and fauna that have not yet been identified by scientists, and an enormous potential for the development of medicines and food products from Amazonian flora that can be of benefit to all mankind.

The tropical forest of the Amazon, also known as “low rainforest,” represents the largest eco-system in Peru, occupying some 67% of its total territory. The area extends from the eastern side of the Andes, at 800 meters above sea level, all the way to Peru’s borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia. The area consists of 68 million hectares (679,060 kilometers), making Peru the country with the fourth-largest area of rainforest in the world.

The Amazon, known as the “Monarch of Rivers,” begins its course toward the Atlantic at the confluence of two lesser rivers, the Ucayali and the Marañon.

“When the colonial chronicler Antonio de León Pinelo visited the northern Peruvian Amazon at the beginning of the 17th century, he was so impressed by the paradisiacal landscapes and abundance of resources the natives had at their fingertips, that he decided to write a book about it: “El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo”, (“Paradise in the New World” ) published in 1653.

(José Álvaro Alonzo, Mi Tierra Amazónica, Tuesday, March 21, 2006)

• The Pacaya Samiria National Reserve
• The Community of Manco Capac
• The El Dorado Lake

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