The Patuca is a river in northeastern Honduras, formed southeast of Juticalpa by the merger of the Guayape and Guayambre rivers. It is the second largest river in Central America and the longest river of Honduras, measuring almost long and draining .

Course

The river originates in the central mountains at the confluence of the Guayape and Guayambre rivers. It flows northeasterly, meandering and twisting along its way to the lowlands of the

Mosquito Coast The Mosquito Coast, also known as the Mosquitia or Mosquito Shore, historically included the area along the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It formed part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskit ...

before joining the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea ( es, Mar Caribe; french: Mer des Caraïbes; ht, Lanmè Karayib; jam, Kiaribiyan Sii; nl, Caraïbische Zee; pap, Laman Karibe) is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico ...

at Patuca Point. The Patuca is infamous within Honduras for a section of rapids known as "El Portal del Infierno" or "The Gates of Hell" which are known to have killed many reckless river-goers. At floodstage the Patuca can reach several miles in width. Its main tributary, the

Guayape Guayape is a municipality in the west of the Honduran department of Olancho, west of Salamá, south of Yocón and north of Concordia. Guayape is divided into three huge territories. Some even covering the river. The lands are divided by the ...

is known to exceed in width nearly every year in areas that can be waded waist-deep in the

dry season The dry season is a yearly period of low rainfall, especially in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which moves from the northern to the southern tropics and back over the course of the year. The te ...

. The Patuca is also well known for its lawless nether regions where small heavily armed groups of men dredge vast

placer gold Placer mining () is the mining of stream bed (alluvial) deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit (also called open-cast mining) or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment. Placer mining is frequently used for p ...

deposits in the areas up-river from the Mosquitia jungle.

Dam projects

The Patuca was proposed to be dammed to provide

hydroelectric power Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined an ...

. Two previous efforts were abandoned, the first in the late 1990s when

Hurricane Mitch Hurricane Mitch is the second-deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record, causing over 11,000 fatalities in Central America in 1998, including approximately 7,000 in Honduras and 3,800 in Nicaragua due to cataclysmic flooding from the slow motion ...

caused widespread damages and the second in 2007 when financial crisis forced Taiwan Power to withdraw. In 2011, The Honduran government approved the

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

firm

Sinohydro Sinohydro ( Chinese: 中国水电; long form: 中国水利水电建设集团公司) is a Chinese state-owned hydropower engineering and construction company. In the 2012 Engineering News-Record Top 225 Global Contractors, a ranking by annual rev ...

to build the first of the three

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use ...

s.Chinese dam project threatens Central America’s largest tropical rainforest and Indigenous populations
/ref> The Patuca River was featured in the Douglas Preston book '' The Codex''.

References

External links

The Patuca Foundation
Rivers of Honduras {{Honduras-river-stub