Napo River

The Napo River is a tributary to the Amazon River that rises in Ecuador on the flanks of the east Andean volcanoes of Antisana, Sinchulawa and Cotopaxi.The total length is 1075km. The river drains an area of 100518km2. The mean annual discharge is 6976m3 per second.Before it reaches the plains it receives a great number of small streams from impenetrable, saturated and much broken mountainous districts, where the dense and varied vegetation seems to fight for every piece of ground. This river is one of Ecuador's Physical Features. From the north it is joined by the Coca River, having its sources in the gorges of Cayambe volcano on the equator, and also a powerful river, the Aguarico, having its headwaters between Cayambe and the Colombian frontier.From the west it receives a secondary tributary, the Curaray, from the Andean slopes, between Cotopaxi and the Tungurahua volcano. From its Coca branch to the mouth of the Curaray the Napo is full of snags and shelving sandbanks, and throws out numerous canos among jungle-tangled islands, which in the wet season are flooded, giving the river an immense width. From the Coca to the Amazon it runs through a forested plain where not a hill is visible from the river - its uniformly level banks being only interrupted by swamps and lagoons.