Meeting of Waters
The Meeting of Waters is the confluence between the dark Rio Negro and the pale sandy-colored Amazon River, referred to as the Solimões River in Brazil upriver of this confluence. For the waters of the two rivers run side by side without mixing. This phenomenon is one of the main tourist attractions of Manaus. The river then flows another before mixing fully, but the phenomenon persists incompletely for another.
This phenomenon is due to the vast differences in temperature, speed, and amount of dissolved sediments 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, Iquitos, Puerto Maldonado and Coari.