There’s no good time of year to travel from this southeastern Peru jungle town to the Brazilian border. In the dry season, the trip along the 135-mile (220-km) unpaved road coats travelers with red dust. In the rainy season, it can leave them mud-spattered, jarred from the ride over ruts—and sometimes stuck. All this is due to change in four years, when a major paving project is finished and the road becomes part of the Interoceanic Highway South—an asphalt route from Brazil to Peru’s Pacific coast. Government officials and many local residents talk eagerly about the economic opportunities that better transportation will bring—among them, improved access to markets, more and cheaper goods and increased tourism. Environmentalists, however, worry about... [Log in to read more]