Choco

Chocó is a rugged Pacific region of western Colombia, formed by mountain slopes dropping toward some of the wettest lowland rainforest in the world. It is the only Colombian department with coasts on both the Pacific and the Atlantic. The geography is exceptionally varied: mountain flanks, forested river valleys and coastal deltas support distinctive ecosystems, while heavy heat and humidity make overland travel difficult. Long-standing isolation has left the region with fewer major roads and has shaped the location of communities. The rivers were the home of the Emberá and Wounaan peoples, and from the eighteenth century Afro-Colombian communities grew up beside them, descended from the enslaved Africans brought to mine gold. Rivers provide routes and support hunting, fishing and riverbank settlement. The town of Quibdó is the largest urban centre. Vasco Núñez de Balboa founded Santa María la Antigua del Darién there in 1510, the first established Spanish town on the American mainland, though it was abandoned in 1524. Spanish miners worked gold and platinum placers along the Atrato and San Juan rivers in the eighteenth century, relying on enslaved African labour, while mountain barriers, heavy rain and distance from the highland cities kept the region thinly settled.