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Colombia Eastern Colombia
The area east of the Andes includes about 699,300
square
kilometers, or three-fifths of the country's total area,
but
Colombians view it almost as an alien land. The entire
area, known
as the eastern plains, was home to only 2 percent of the
country's
population in the late 1980s
(see
fig. 3). The Spanish
term for
plains (llanos) can be applied only to the open plains in
the
northern part, particularly the piedmont areas near the
Cordillera
Oriental, where cattle raising is practiced.
The region is unbroken by highlands except in Meta
Department,
where the Macarena Sierra, an outlier of the Andes, is of
interest
to scientists because its vegetation and wildlife are
believed to
be reminiscent of those that once existed throughout the
Andes.
Many of the numerous large rivers of eastern Colombia are
navigable. The Río Guaviare and the streams to its north
flow
eastward and drain into the basin of the Río Orinoco, the
largest
river in Venezuela. Those south of the Río Guaviare flow
into the
basin of the Amazon. The Río Guaviare divides eastern
Colombia into
the llanos subregion in the north and the tropical
rainforest, or
selva, subregion in the south.
Data as of December 1988
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