Caquetá River

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The Caquetá River rises in the Andes Mountains near the southern Colombian city of Mocoa. It runs for some 600 miles southwest to the Brazilian border, where it becomes the Japurá River, a tributary of the Amazon River.

The river is home to a wide variety of fish and reptiles, including enormous catfish weighing up to 200 lbs. and measuring up to six feet in length, electric eels, piranhas, turtles, and caimans. It also serves as a principal means of transportation, being plied by tiny dugout canoes, larger ones, motorboats, and riverboats known locally as "lanchas." These lanchas carry a multitude of cargoes, sometimes being chartered, sometimes even being traveling general stores. The presence of guerrillas and soldiers often severely limits river traffic.

Much of the jungle through which the eastern Caquetá originally flowed has been cleared for pasture, crops of rice, corn, "yuca" (manioc), and sugar cane, and in the past two decades, particularly coca crops.