The Meeting of Waters ( pt, Encontro das Águas) is the

confluence In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...

between the dark ( blackwater) Rio Negro and the pale sandy-colored (

whitewater Whitewater forms in a rapid context, in particular, when a river's gradient changes enough to generate so much turbulence that air is trapped within the water. This forms an unstable current that froths, making the water appear opaque and ...

)

Amazon River The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile. The headwaters of t ...

, referred to as the

Solimões River Solimões () is the name often given to upper stretches of the Amazon River in Brazil from its confluence with the Rio Negro upstream to the border of Peru. Geography The Amazon / Solimões river just above the confluence of the Solimões and ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

upriver of this confluence. For the two rivers' waters run side by side without much mixing. It is one of the main

tourist Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism mo ...

attractions of

Manaus Manaus () is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It is the seventh-largest city in Brazil, with an estimated 2020 population of 2,219,580 distributed over a land area of about . Located at the east center of the s ...

, Brazil. This phenomenon is due to the differences in temperature, speed, and amount of dissolved

sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand an ...

s in the waters of the two rivers. The Rio Negro flows at near at a temperature of , while the Rio Solimões flows between at a temperature of . The light-colored water is rich with sediment from the Andes Mountains, whereas the black water, running from the Colombian hills and interior jungles, is nearly sediment-free and colored by decayed leaf and plant matter. Smaller-scale meeting of waters of the Amazon river also occurs in the locations of Santarém (Brazil) and

Iquitos Iquitos (; ) is the capital city of Peru's Maynas Province and Loreto Region. It is the largest metropolis in the Peruvian Amazon, east of the Andes, as well as the ninth-most populous city of Peru. Iquitos is the largest city in the world th ...

(Peru).

References

Rivers of Amazonas (Brazilian state) {{AmazonasBR-river-stub