The Amazon River is the second-longest river in the world, flowing through the heart of South America. But here’s a surprising fact: despite stretching over 6,400 kilometres, it has no bridges crossing it. Why?
The first reason is geography. The Amazon winds through dense rainforest and remote areas where very few people live. Unlike Europe’s rivers, there are hardly any big cities along most of its length. Building bridges where there are few roads or towns simply isn’t useful.
The second reason is size. The river is massive—sometimes more than 10 kilometres wide during the rainy season. Constructing a bridge across such a huge span would be extremely difficult and expensive. Instead, locals travel by boats and ferries, which are far more practical.
There is one exception: in the Brazilian city of Manaus, a bridge crosses the Rio Negro, one of the Amazon’s big tributaries. But across the main Amazon itself? None at all.
This makes the Amazon unique among the world’s great rivers. Rather than steel bridges, it is spanned by canoes, ferries, and the imagination of travellers. The lack of bridges has kept the rainforest wild and the river flowing just as it has for thousands of years.
Floating forests appear every year
During rainy seasons, huge areas of forest are flooded, with treetops turning into temporary “floating islands.”
It carries more water than any other river
The Amazon discharges one-fifth of all the world’s freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean.