In Guainía there are three main colonization centers: Inírida, Barrancominas and San Felipe. The most important is Inírida, very big and heterogeneus, as a hot neighborhood of Bogotá.
The first capital was in San Felipe, then in Port Colombia and later they changed it to Inírida. And there it stayed. The others were in the river Guainía and it was complicated to arrive to them even by river. Inírida, on the other hand, served to the armed forces as support point. They no longer had to travel so long distance for arrive to the frontier with Venezuela, and they had the Guaviare and Atabapo rivers at near step, both near the colonization area that interested them.
Since its foundation the town has grown vertiginously. In 30 years, the small indigenous population became a town with more than 14 thousand inhabitants. A sharp contrast with the rest of the departamento, with indigenous populations that don't surpass 800 people.
The town is seated in a dry area surrounded of in-flood-covered areas. There are three brooks around the urban helmet: Pipe Venado (Deer) to the east, Pipe Vitina to the west and Pipe Conejo (Rabbit) to the south. In the middle of summer they don't overcome 2 meters wide, but in winter (or more properly in rain season) you cannot see a bank from the other one. As Colombian town that is respected, it has people living in in-flood-covered area.
The population grew from the margin of the river, with the port at a wise distance, to avoid the waters taking it out. The Inírida is an enormous river if we compare it with the Pance or the Cali, let us say three times wider than the Cauca and very much deeper. Many years ago, it grew so much that it flooded six blocks beyond the port.
But their river is their life. By it they arrive daily fishermen in canoes and boats to offer some of the 24 fish species that can get, with merchandise to sell. In the past they were fish so big that a medium man could not measure it with the extended arms. Today they are not so common.
Inírida has two very gifted supermarkets, Servientregae20, Agrarian Box and all that is usually found in a small town. People of all parts, mainly from Boyacá and from the Plains, they turned it their house, attracted by its calm and the money that coca left. Lately, the gold and the employment that the state entities offer are what mantain them.
NOTE
A well-known courrier office in Colombia.