AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Río Iguana is a small Caribbean-flowing river on Antioquia's Urabá coast, one of the principal waterways that drain the low-lying banana-growing plains between Necoclí and San Juan de Urabá into the Gulf of Urabá. Though not a developed tourist site in its own right, it marks a stretch of Colombia's northern Caribbean shoreline where rivers meet the sea through sandbars, headlands and tropical farmland.↗↗
A River of the Urabá Coast
The Río Iguana — sometimes recorded as Quebrada Iguana — belongs to the cluster of short rivers that run from the Serranía de Abibe foothills down through the flat coastal plain to the Caribbean Sea. Antioquia's shoreline along the Gulf of Urabá is fed by rivers such as the Mulatos, Damaquiel, San Juan and Hobo; the Río Iguana sits among them, discharging near the localities of El Uvero and Sabanilla, between the municipalities of Necoclí and San Juan de Urabá.↗↗↗
The river's mouth area lies close to notable coastal headlands — Punta Gigantón and Punta Sabanilla — which give the shoreline its characteristic rhythm of small coves and sandy points. The wider Urabá coast stretches roughly 146 km from Turbo north to Arboletes, and studies by the University of Antioquia have identified the Uveros sector, near the Río Iguana's drainage, as one of the areas most affected by coastal erosion.