9781422286418

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Land of Contrasts

Busy seaports and open areas of sandy beaches, palm trees, and resort towns occupy much of the populous Caribbean coastline. Fewer people live along the Pacific’s rainy and heavily forested seashore, where small beaches dot long rocky stretches of land. A large area of Colombia’s lowlands is composed of the llanos , or grass- land plains, located east of the Andes. An enormous tract of open prairie, the llanos cover nearly a quarter of Colombia. They are part of South America’s Orinoco Basin, named for the Orinoco River, which forms Colombia’s eastern boundary with Venezuela. Few crops can grow in the poor soil of the llanos, and most people who live on Colombia’s plains raise cattle and horses. In this thinly populated and largely undeveloped frontier, travelers depend on dirt roads to get from place to place, although these usually become impassable during heavy rains and seasonal flooding. Most towns and villages are accessible by airplane or by boat, on the meandering river tributaries that lead to the Orinoco River. Rain Forests and Deserts South of the llanos lie the humid jungles of the Amazon Basin, the world’s largest tropical rain forest. The Amazon River itself borders Colombia for only about 50 miles (80 km) in the extreme southeastern corner of the country. However, its rain forest and tributaries cover much of the country’s southern region. Several national parks in the region shelter an enormous diversity of plants and animals. Another thick, tropical rain forest lies in Colombia’s northwest. Located near the border with Panama, in the remote Chocó region, this sparsely popu-