Amazon River and Adventure Tour:

Amazon River and Adventure Tour

The Amazon River of South America is the largest river in the world by volume, with a total river flow greater than the next top ten largest rivers flowing into the ocean combined. The Amazon, which has the largest drainage basin in the world, accounts for approximately one fifth of the world's total river flow. Because of its vast dimensions, it is sometimes called The River Sea. At no point is the Amazon crossed by bridges.[1] This is only partly because of its huge dimensions—in fact, for most of its length the Amazon is not so wide that a modern bridge could not span it—but more because, for most of its length, the river flows through tropical rainforest, where there are few roads and even fewer cities.

While the Amazon is clearly the largest river in the world by most measures, the current consensus within the geographic community holds that the Amazon is the second longest river, just slightly shorter than the Nile. However, some scientists, particularly from Brazil, dispute this.


Wildlife

More than one third of all species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest, a giant tropical forest and river basin with an area that stretches more than 5.4 million square kilometres (2,100,000 sq mi) and is among the richest tropical forests in the world. The Amazon River has over 3,000 recognized species of fish and that number is still growing. Some estimates go as high as 5,000.

Along with the Orinoco, the river is one of the main habitats of the Boto, also known as the Amazon River Dolphin. The largest species of river dolphin, it can grow to lengths of up to 2.6 metres (9 ft). The boto is the subject of a very famous legend in Brazil, about a dolphin that turns into a human.

Also present in large numbers are the notorious piranha, carnivorous fish which congregate in large schools, and may attack livestock and even humans. However, only a few species attack humans, and many are solely fish-eaters, and do not school.

The bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) has been reported 4,000 km (2,220 miles) up the Amazon River at Iquitos in Peru. The arapaima, or pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) is a South American tropical freshwater fish. It is one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, reportedly with a maximum length in excess of 3 m (9.8 ft) and weight up to 200 kg (440 lb). Another Amazonian freshwater fish is the arowana (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum) which is also a predator and very similar to the arapaima, but reaches a length of maximum 120 centimetres.

The Anaconda snake is found in shallow waters in the Amazon basin.[8]One of the world's largest species of snake, the Anaconda spends most of its time in the water, with just its nostrils above the surface. The river supports thousands of species of fish, as well as crabs, algae, and turtles.

Origins of the River

The Upper Amazon has a series of major river systems in Peru and Ecuador, some of which flow into the Marañón and others directly into the Amazon proper. Among others, these include the following rivers: Morona, Pastaza, Nucuray, Urituyacu, Chambira, Tigre, Nanay, Napo, Huallaga, and Ucayali. The headstreams of the Marañón—which for many years had been seen as the origin of the Amazon—flow from high above central Peru's Lake Lauricocha, from the glaciers in what is known as the Nevado de Yarupa. Rushing through waterfalls and gorges in an area of the high jungle called the pongos, the Marañón River flows about 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) from west-central to northeast Peru before it combines with the Ucayali River, just below the provincial town of Nauta, to form the Amazon River.

The most distant source of the Amazon was firmly established in 1996, 2001 and 2007 as a glacial stream on a snowcapped 5,597 m (18,363 ft) peak called Nevado Mismi in the Peruvian Andes, roughly 160 km (100 mi) west of Lake Titicaca and 700 km (430 mi) southeast of Lima. The waters from Nevado Mismi flow into the Quebradas Carhuasanta and Apacheta, which flow into the Río Apurímac which is a tributary of the Ucayali which later joins the Marañón to form the Amazon proper. (While this is the point at which most geographers place the beginning of the Amazon proper, in Brazil the river is known at this point as the Solimões das Águas). Soon thereafter the dark almost black colored waters of the Rio Negro meet the sandy colored Rio Solimões, and for over 6 km these waters run side by side without mixing.

After the confluence of Río Apurímac and Ucayali, the river leaves Andean terrain and is instead surrounded by flood plain. From this point to the Marañón, some 1,600 km (990 mi), the forested banks are just out of water, and are inundated long before the river attains its maximum flood-line. The low river banks are interrupted by only a few hills, and the river enters the enormous Amazon Rainforest.

The river systems and flood plains in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela whose waters drain into the Solimões and its tributaries are called the "Upper Amazon". The Amazon river runs mostly through Brazil and Peru. The countries it branches off into consist of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia*.

20th Century Concerns

Four centuries after the European discovery of the Amazon river, the total cultivated area in its basin was probably less than 65 square kilometres (25 sq mi), excluding the limited and crudely cultivated areas among the mountains at its extreme headwaters. This situation changed dramatically during the 20th century.
Manaus, the largest city on the Amazon, as seen from a NASA satellite image, surrounded by the muddy Amazon River and the dark Rio Negro.

Wary of foreign exploitation of the nation's resources, Brazilian governments in the 1940s set out to develop the interior, away from the seaboard where foreigners owned large tracts of land. The original architect of this expansion was President Getúlio Vargas, the demand for rubber from the Allied forces in World War II providing funding for the drive.

The construction of the new capital Brasilia in the interior in 1960 also contributed to the opening up of the Amazon basin. A large scale colonization program saw families from north-eastern Brazil relocated to the forests, encouraged by promises of cheap land. Many settlements grew along the road from Brasilia to Belém, but rainforest soil proved difficult to cultivate.

Still, long-term development plans continued. Roads were cut through the forests, and in 1970, the work on Trans-Amazon highway network began. The network's three pioneering highways were completed within ten years, connecting all the major cities of the Brazilian Amazon interior.