it connected the city of puerto maldonado with the city of cusco in the andes. that voyage used to take about two weeks in the rainy season. now it takes about 6 hours. the price of gold started to rise, and in 2008, it skyrocketed. and that created an unprecedented gold boom for tens of thousands of miner who came from mainly the andes into dre de dios and started to take the forest apart. some of the most dense and biodiverse rain forests in the world. so la pampa is an area next to the highway. about 5 years ago, this was a place that was a couple miners, a couple tents. and it eventually became an illegal city that had thousands of people and was the gateway to the hotspot of illegal gold mining in the amazon. [karina garay speaking spanish] fernandez: it's a place that has now been taken apart by a government action called operation mercury. [man yells, men respond] [garay speaking spanish] [garay speaking spanish] [garay speaking spanish] [gonzalo cordova speaks spanish] [garay speaking spanish] [woman speaking spanish] [camera focus adjusting] [garay spea