Chota

Chota is a town in northern Peru and the capital of Chota Province in the Cajamarca Region, the seat of the Territorial Prelature of Chota. It lies at 2,388 metres above sea level on the Acunta plateau on the eastern slope of the Andes, 150 kilometres north of Cajamarca and 215 kilometres east of Chiclayo, and rivers of the westernmost Amazon basin bound it on three sides: the San Mateo to the north, the Colpamayo to the east and the Río Chotano to the south-west. The German researcher Ernst Middendorf linked the name to the Aymara word chuta, meaning milestone or boundary stone, as part of a series of Aymara names across the northern Peruvian highlands, and the same toponym recurs in many localities of Peru. The climate is described as generally temperate, with a mild winter and a hot, rainy summer from November to April, an average temperature of 17.8 degrees Celsius, and rains that vary cyclically with El Niño.