Nevado Mismi

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A peak in the Chila range of the Peruvian Andes, in the Arequipa Region, on whose northern flank the Carhuasanta stream rises. A 1971 National Geographic expedition associated with Loren McIntyre identified this stream as the most distant source of the Amazon, and the identification held for more than three decades as the conventional answer. It matters to this Journey for a reason that has nothing to do with record-keeping: the Andes are the wall that turns the system around. Moisture blown west across the basin from the Atlantic cannot cross the cordillera, so it is deflected south along the eastern Andean flank, and that deflection is what carries Amazonian water to the subtropics.