Amazon Rainforest Tours and Travel | Amazon, the River
The primordial Amazon moves slowly but powerfully through a vast rainforest. Though the debate continues about whether the Amazon or the Nile is the world's longest river, the Amazon holds the undisputed title as the mightiest. The volume of water flowing down the 4,000-mile Amazon from its headwaters to the sea is greater than the next ten rivers combined, discharging some eight trillion gallons a day, sixty times that of the Nile. The Amazon drains water from 40% of South America and itself is replenished by snow from the Andes and some 400 inches of rain that fall annually near the equator, raising the river's average depth to 130 feet during the rainy season.
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Starting from a glacial stream high in the southern Peru Andes, the Amazon is fed by several major and many minor tributaries, flowing within the borders of five more countries of South America, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil. The river is called the "Amazon" between Manaus, Brazil, and the sea and intermittently further inland. The river has not always flowed eastward. During pre-historic times before the uplifting of the Andes, the Amazon flowed westward to the Pacific near what is today the port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador.
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A river so wide, no bridges cross it, the Amazon covers some 42,000 square miles and is up to seven miles wide during its dry season, expanding to a width of over twenty-four miles and three times the area the rest of the year. With no waterfalls or other obstacles to prevent navigation, the final 2,400-miles is a commercial route for ocean vessels, though in the open areas where the river is widest, navigation is complicated by the continual formation of subterranean sandbars. Iquitos, Peru and the Brazilian cities of Manaus, 900 miles inland, and Belem near the mouth of the Amazon on its south channel are the river's major port cities.
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Before it reaches the sea, the Amazon's final 2,000 miles flows through flat lowlands prone to flooding. The river washes away some islands and creates others, sometimes cutting a new channel, separating the piece of land from the mainland shore or building up sandbars. The Amazon pours into the Atlantic in northeastern Brazil from 200 mile-wide mouth, splitting into two channels to get around Marajo Island. Each spring, along the shallow coastline north of the river's mouth, a tidal bore (called the pororoca), generates a wave high enough to surf which has become a popular, albeit dangerous, pastime. The Amazon's plume of nutrient-rich fresh water gushes into the Atlantic for a distance of over 100 miles.
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