#Twenty Wet Waterways of the World

Don’t cry us an estuary...but realize it’s time to look at some of the wondrous and wacky waterways of the world.  They’re also wet, mostly.  We’re not saying that’s a bad thing, either.

1. The Aa is a 55-mile long river in northern France. It is doubtful area water conservationists call their get-together "AA meetings".
2. The Branco River in Roraima, Brazil, is the principal tributary of the Black River, itself the largest left tributary of the Amazon. The river is referred to as "branco" (white) because of inorganic sediments carried in the water.
3. The Drava is a river in southern Central Europe. With a length of 465 miles, it is the fourth longest tributary of the Danube, and flows through Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary. The name is most likely of Celtic or Illyrian origin. The river gives its name to the dravite species of tourmaline.
4. The Earnscleugh River is in the Otago Region of New Zealand. The name Earnscleugh is given to the upper reaches of the river. The lower reaches are called the Fraser River, after one of the owners of Earnscleugh Station, William Fraser, who introduced rabbits to the area. Hair-raising trivia, this is. Tell your friends.
5. The Geeste is a river in northwestern Germany, running through Lower Saxony and Bremen. Despite its name, only the upper reaches of the Geeste flow through geest, the rest flows through marshland. The term geest is a substantivisation of the Low German adjective güst, which means "dry and infertile".
6. The Haffar (Arabic for "excavated," "dug out) was a canal to join the Karun River to the Shatt al-Arab waterway, the joint estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. King Panah Khusraw Adud ad-Dawlah ordered the digging of the canal.
7. The Ikoy is a river of central-western Gabon. It is a tributary of the Ngounié River and flows into the river to the southeast of Lambaréné. The river is believed to be inhabited by a strange creature named a N’yamala, a dinosaur-like creature over 30 feet. Fang witch doctor Michel Obiang reported seeing it in 1946 near its confluence with the Ngounié River.
8. The Koshi, or Kosi, River drains the northern slopes of the Himalayas in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the southern slopes in Nepal. The Koshi is 450 miles long and drains an area of about 28,800 square miles in Tibet, Nepal and Bihar.
9. The Luangwa River is one of the major tributaries of the Zambezi River, and one of the four biggest rivers of Zambia. The upper and middle parts of the Luangwa Valley contain the North Luangwa National Park and South Luangwa National Parks of Zambia, which are among some of the finest in Africa. The river itself is home to large populations of hippopotami and crocodiles.
10. The Medjerda River is a river in North Africa flowing from northeast Algeria through Tunisia before emptying into the Gulf of Tunis and Lake of Tunis. At 280 miles, it is the longest river of Tunisia. It is also known as the wādi (or oued) Majardah and Wadi Mejerha and it was known as Bagrada in ancient times.
11. The Napo River is a tributary to the Amazon River that rises in Ecuador on the flanks of the east Andean volcanoes of Antisana, Sinchulawa, and Cotopaxi, running about 668 miles.
12. The Orinoco is one of the longest rivers in South America at 1,330 miles. Its drainage basin, sometimes called the Orinoquia, covers 340,000 square miles with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the world by discharge volume of water. The Orinoco and its tributaries are the major transportation system for eastern and interior Venezuela and the llanos of Colombia. The Orinoco is extremely diverse and hosts a wide variety of flora and fauna. Of note: Heraclitus did not compose the adage "Panta rhei" after sailing upon this river.
13. The Pánuco is a 320 mile river in Mexico fed by several tributaries including the Moctezuma River and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Near its source, the Pánuco serves as a drainage channel for Mexico City. From there, it becomes the state border between Hidalgo and Querétaro as it moves toward San Luis Potosí. It takes the name Río Pánuco only upon reaching the state of Veracruz. It empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Tampico and Ciudad Madero, where it forms the border between the states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz. The Tampico Bridge crosses the river near its mouth on the Gulf. In 1519, during his cartographic expeditions along the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda established a settlement on the river, which he named Las Palmas, though it was abandoned after he was killed in battle with indigenous peoples living nearby.
14. The Raidāk River is a 230-miles tributary of the Brahmaputra River, and a trans-boundary river. It flows through Bhutan, India and Bangladesh.
15. The Schwalm (German) or Swalm (Dutch), is a small river in Germany and the Netherlands, tributary to the river Meuse. Its source is near Wegberg, in the district Heinsberg, south-west of Mönchengladbach, in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). The Schwalm flows through Wegberg and Brüggen before flowing into the Meuse across the border with the Netherlands, in Swalmen. Its total length is less than 30 miles.
16. The Turkwel River is a river flowing from Mount Elgon in the border of Kenya and Uganda to Lake Turkana. The river is called the Suam River from its source to the border with the West Pokot County of Kenya. The name Turkwel is derived from the Turkana name for the river, Tir-kol, which means translates to a river that "withstands the wilderness".
17. The Ugab River is an ephemeral river that only flows above the surface of its sandy bed a few days each year, but even during much of the dry season its subterranean water surfaces as pools in places, and provides an important resource for species in the Damaraland region of northern Namibia.
18. The Vomano is a river in the Abruzzo region of Italy. The river crosses the border into the province of Teramo and flows northeast near Montorio al Vomano and Basciano. Cool, huh?
19. The Winterborne is a river in Dorset, England. The river only flows overground during the winter, hence the name. It flows through a number of villages with a first name of "Winterborne" from Anderson to Zelston. No Alpheus, though.
20. The Zenibako River runs from Otaru, Hokkaidō, Hokkaidō, Japan and ends in the Sea of Japan. It is a Normal Class River of the Zenibako River System under Japanese River Law.