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San Pedro de Inacaliri River, or called simply San Pedro River, is a river of Chile located in 
Before discharging into
El Loa Province
El Loa Province ( es, Provincia El Loa) is one of three provinces of the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta (II). It is named after the longest of rivers in Chile, the Loa River. The provincial capital is Calama.
Geography and demography
A ...
, Antofagasta Region
The Antofagasta Region ( es, Región de Antofagasta, ) is one of Chile's sixteen first-order administrative divisions. The second-largest region of Chile in area, it comprises three provinces, Antofagasta, El Loa and Tocopilla. It is bordered t ...
. It begins at the confluence of the rivers Silala and ''Cajón'', at an elevation over 4,000 m asl.
A part of its flow is diverted (between 50 and 60 L/s) and conducted across the desert to Chuquicamata
Chuquicamata ( ; referred to as Chuqui for short) is the largest open pit copper mine in terms of excavated volume in the world. It is located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama, at above sea level. It is northeast of Antofagasta and n ...
for domestic water supply. About 8 km south, the waters of the river disappear in a floodplain area to reappear 15 km downstream at the so-called ''Ojos del San Pedro'' in the form of a partially overground stream, at the eastern border of a salt flat with a surface of 5 km2.
Before discharging into Loa River
The Loa River (Spanish: Río Loa) is a U-shaped river in Chile's northern Antofagasta Region. At long, it is the country's longest river and the main watercourse in the Atacama Desert.
Course
The Loa's sources are located on Andean mountain sl ...
, the river skirts the San Pedro volcano, where it has carved a 100-m-deep canyon through a rhyolite
Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...
lava flow.
References
*This article draws heavily on the corresponding article in the Spanish-language Wikipedia, accessed August 31, 2007. * Rivers of Antofagasta Region Rivers of Chile {{Chile-river-stub