Japurá River

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The Japurá River or Caquetá River also called the zhepoorä´ in Latin is a river of c.1,750 mi (2,815 km) long (some sources say 2,414 km) rising as the Caquetá River in the Andes in the Southwest of Colombia. It flows southeast into Brazil, where it is called the Japurá. The Japura enters the Amazon River through a network of channels. It is navigable by small boats in Brazil.

The river is home to a wide variety of fish and reptiles, including enormous catfish weighing up to 200 lb (91 kg). 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.

West of the Rio Negro the Amazon River receives three more imposing streams from the north-west -- the Yapura, the Içá (referred to as the Putumayo before it crosses over into Brazil), and the Napo. The first was formerly known as the Hyapora, but its Brazilian part is now called the Yapura, and its Colombian portion the Caquetá. Barao de Marajo gives it 600 miles (970 km) of navigable stretches. Jules Crevaux, who descended it, describes it as full of obstacles to navigation, the current very strong and the stream frequently interrupted by rapids and cataracts. It rises in the Colombian Andes, nearly in touch with the sources of the Magdalena River, and augments its volume from many branches as it courses through Colombia. It was long supposed to have eight mouths; but Ribeiro de Sampaio, in his voyage of 1774, determined that there was but one real mouth, and that the supposed others are all furos or canos[1]. In 1864-1868 the Brazilian government made a somewhat careful examination of the Brazilian part of the river, as far up as the rapid of Cupaty. Several very easy and almost complete water-routes exist between the Yapura and Negro across the low, flat intervening country. Barao de Marajo says there are six of them, and one which connects the upper Yapura with the Vaupés branch of the Negro; thus the Indian tribes of the respective valleys have facile contact with each other.