The Pacific Region is located on Colombia's western, Pacific coast, and covers an area of 83,170 km². It extends from the Gulf of Urabá in the north to the border with Ecuador in the south, and includes part of the departments of Nariño, Cauca, Valle de Cauca and Antioquia, and the whole of Chocó department.
This region is distinguished by its high humidity. Precipitation is among the highest in the world, with an average of 4,000 mm per year and some areas that receive as much as 12,000 mm per year. These high levels of precipitation support a number of rivers, including the Atrato River, San Juan River, Patía River, Baudó River and Mira River. The population of the region is mainly Afro-Colombian (it also includes several indigenous settlements), and the economy is based on mining (gold and platinum), timber, fishing, cattle raising and agriculture (particularly the cultivation of borojo, banana and plantain). Buenaventura is Colombia's main Pacific port.
Read more about this topic: Regions Of Colombia
Famous quotes containing the words pacific and/or region:
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)