Tingo María 6.91

Tingo María is the capital of Leoncio Prado Province in the Huánuco Region in central Peru. It has an urban population of around 55,000 (June 2007).Tingo María was considered unreachable until 1936, when the Montaña Road reached the settlement. It was then that the state run Estacion Experimental Agricola was established due to its "comfortable" elevation (2,204 ft). In 1942, the U.S. Government began adding more funding to the station, and by 1960 over 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were under cultivation, especially along the Huallaga River valley where land was level. Coffee was a particularly valuable crop. The city nickname is "the Door of the Amazonia."The city is placed where two important rivers meet; the Monzón and the Huallaga river, a main contributor of the Marañón river. The city headquarters the National University of the Forest (UNAS-www.unas.edu.pe); it has 7 faculties, a botanical park, and first level facilities. Near the city there is the Tingo María National Park of 180 km² (43000acre) that preserves nature and a limestone mountain range in the shape of a woman that sleeps. It is called La Bella Durmiente (Spanish for Sleeping Beauty) or Pumarinri (Quechua for "cougar ear"). A legend explains the form of the range. The main attraction is a cave named Cueva de las Lechuzas (Spanish for "cave of the owls") (named after a colony of the superficially owl-like Oilbird found in it), probably the most attractive and accessible cave of Peru, though it is not the longest and deepest.