Puerto Alfonso López () is a small town and municipality in the Orinoquía Region (

Llanos The Llanos (Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grasslands, sav ...

region) of

Meta Department Meta () is a departments of Colombia, department of Colombia. It is close to the geographic center of the country, to the east of the Andean mountains. A large portion of the department, which is also crossed by the Meta River, is covered by a ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. It is known as Puerto López and is a port on the

Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...

river. The town is located approximately 100 kilometers east of the town of

Villavicencio Villavicencio () is a city and municipality in Colombia. Capital of Meta Department, it was founded on April 6, 1840. The city had an urban population of approximately 531,275 inhabitants in 2018.https://www.dane.gov.co/files/varios/informacion ...

. Its main industries are agriculture and cattle. Puerto Lopez has been said to be the "belly button", or

geographical center In geography, the centroid of the two-dimensional shape of a region of the Earth's surface (projected radially to sea level or onto a geoid surface) is known as its geographic centre or geographical centre or (less commonly) gravitational centre. I ...

, of Colombia. Nearby is the Obelisco del Alto de Menegua, a 30 meter tall obelisk that marks the intersection of 4 degrees north latitude and 72 degrees west longitude.

History

The town was established on 1 May 1935. It was centered on the river port and pre-existing village. On 3 May 1937, the Intendencia for Meta Department ordered the creation of the Yacuana District (''corregimiento'') whose capital is Puerto Alfonso Lopez. The municipality was established on 3 July 1955, in accordance with National Decree No. 2543 of 1945.

Notes

External links

Puerto Lopez official website
Municipalities of Meta Department {{MetaCO-geo-stub