The Lower Magdalena River Valley

By Richard McColl

Strategic and fertile are two ways to describe the vast stretches of flood plain that make up the Lower Magdalena River Valley: originally strategic as the main route from the coast to the interior, and fertile in containing some of Colombia's largest cattle ranches. Spend any time in this sweltering region and you'll see that cattle farming is the dominant industry. Enormous ranches extend out from towns along the Magdalena River and any journey you make will undoubtedly be delayed by a passing cattle train ambling along a major byway.  As ranching is life to the people here, town festivals and ferias often resemble rodeos with bull riding and drinking that evoke scenes reminiscent of a long disappeared American West.

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