Tingo María

Tingo María is the capital of Leoncio Prado Province in the Huánuco Region of central Peru, with 46,191 inhabitants at the 2017 census, and is nicknamed the Door of the Amazonia. It stands where the Monzón and Huallaga rivers meet and was considered unreachable until 1936, when the Montaña Road arrived; the state-run Estación Experimental Agrícola was set up then, and by 1960 over 40,000 acres were under cultivation, coffee being a particularly valuable crop. The city is home to the National University of the Forest, and nearby Tingo María National Park, of 180 square kilometres, protects a limestone range shaped like a sleeping woman, called La Bella Durmiente or Pumarinri, and the Cueva de las Lechuzas, a cave named for its colony of oilbirds. The Federico Basadre Highway crosses the city halfway from Lima to Pucallpa, and it has an airport. The climate is tropical rainforest, Köppen Af, with the heaviest rain from November to March. The American actor Eric Fleming drowned in the Huallaga River near here in 1966.