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The Pongo de Manseriche is a river gorge in northwestern Peru. The Marañón River runs through this gorge before reaching the lower Amazon River Basin. The Pongo de Manseriche is 3 miles (4.8 km) long, located at 4° 27' 30" South and 77° 34' 51" West, just below the mouth of the Santiago River, and between it and the old mission station of Borgia. According to Captain Carbajal, who descended the Pongo on the small steamer Napo, in 1868, it is a large dent in the Andes about 2,000 feet (600 m) deep, narrowing in places to a width of only 100 feet (30 m). Through this dark canyon, the Marañón jumps, sometimes at a speed of 12 miles per hour (19.3 km/h, or 5.36 m/s). The Pongo de Manseriche was discovered for the first time by the Adelantado Juan de Salinas. He set up an expedition in Loja in Ecuador, descended the Santiago River to the Marañón, passed through the Pongo in 1557 and invaded the country of the Maynas Indians. The pongo is a frightening succession of torrents and eddies interspersed with rocks. There is an ancient tradition of the indigenous people of the neighborhood that one of their gods descended from the Marañon and another rose from the Amazon to communicate with each other. They opened the pass called Pongo de Manseriche (Wikipedia).
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