River · Bolivia
Mamoré
Mamoré is the longest river of Bolivia. It gathers water from the Andes, crosses the wide plains of the Amazon lowlands and finally meets the Beni, where the two form the mighty Madeira.
Picture credit: Andrea (CC BY 2.0) · Fernando Locatelli (CC BY 3.0) · Yulacha (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Mamoré?
The river starts here: Andes of central Bolivia.
It ends in the joins the Beni to form the Madeira.
Countries on the river: Bolivia.
The story behind it
For most of its journey the Mamoré is a slow, wide river of the Bolivian lowlands. It curves through savanna and forest, and in the rainy season it floods the plains of Moxos until the grassland looks like a shallow sea. Cattle are driven to higher ground, and boats travel where footpaths used to be. Pink river dolphins hunt in the muddy water, caimans rest on sandbanks, capybaras graze at the edge and piranhas dart between drowned branches. Riverboats carry bananas, timber and passengers to the town of Trinidad and to smaller ports. Not everything about this river is settled, though: how long it is depends on which headwater counts as the true beginning, so books give different numbers, and part of the lower course forms a border with Brazil.
Questions children ask
How long is the Mamoré?
The Mamoré is usually given as about 1 930 kilometres long. Other books name different figures, because it is not agreed which mountain stream counts as the very first source.
Which countries does the Mamoré flow through?
Where does the Mamoré end?
It does not reach the sea by itself. Together with the Beni it forms the Madeira, and the Madeira flows into the Amazon, which finally empties into the Atlantic.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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