#flathal #flatstanley #manaus #amazonriver
With a population of approximately 2 million people, Manaus is not some small village in the Amazon. Instead this is a major city, located on the Rio Negro (Black River) which has much clearer water than the muddy Amazon.
Flat Hal and Flat Stanley double checked with Google’s Gemini AI to make sure they were sharing the right info, and found: The Rio Negro merges with the Amazon River (which is called the Rio Solimões upstream of this point) just a short distance downstream (east) from Manaus.
This confluence is famously known as the “Meeting of Waters” (Encontro das Águas), where the dark waters of the Rio Negro flow alongside the muddy, lighter-colored waters of the Solimões/Amazon for several kilometers without mixing immediately.
Put oil and water together – see how they don’t mix right away? What the flat fellas saw at the Meeting of Waters (Encontro das Águas) near Manaus looks strikingly similar!
But the reasons oil and water don’t mix are different than why these two rivers stay separate for a while. For the rivers, it’s because they have different temperatures (one’s warmer!), different speeds (one’s faster!), and one carries much more mud, making it heavier. These differences prevent the two massive rivers from mixing easily when they meet
