Visibly blossoming from its recent road connection to the outside world, Puerto Maldonado, capital of the southern jungle, has an increasingly smart sheen to the mayhem of its central streets, a-buzz with manically tooting mototaxis (three-wheeled motorcycle rickshaw taxis). The city’s money-spinning proximity to the most easily visited animal-rich jungle in the entire Amazon Basin is its blessing but also its curse: travelers arrive, yet all too quickly leave again en route to the lodges and wildlife on the nearby rivers.