Second Day: Iquitos

June 28

This morning I flew over the Andes Mountains and landed in the rainforest. From the plane I could see how dry and brown the western slopes of the Andes are. Then we flew over tall peaks, some with snow on them (it's winter right now south of the equator) and all of a sudden I could see green below us, and a small brown ribbon, a river, that got bigger and bigger as it flowed down from the mountains. Many of the rivers are brown with sediment eroded and washed downstream.

The Amazon River travels over 4,000 miles and carries the most water of any river in the world. Over 1,100 smaller rivers feed into the Amazon, and when it reaches the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil, it discharges 4,500,000,000 gallons of water every day into the sea. You can see the muddy Amazon water up to sixty miles out to sea from the air. 

Here are some images of the Amazon River watershed taken by satellite. (from Earth Snapshot)

The mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. Muddy water from the river spreads out into the ocean.

Rivers of brown water flowing across the rainforests of Peru to the Amazon River.