La Guajira Desert
desert in Colombia and Venezuela
The La Guajira Desert [la ɣwaˈxiɾa] (Wayuu: Woumainkat Wajiira, Spanish: Desierto de La Guajira) is a desert located in northern Colombia and Venezuela, approximately 1,100 km (680 mi) north of Bogotá, covering most of the La Guajira Peninsula at the northernmost tip of South America. It is the continent's largest desert north of the equator. Most of the region is within Colombia's La Guajira Department, though a small portion is in the Venezuelan state of Zulia. The area holds immense coal reserves which are exploited in a zone known as El Cerrejón. It is also home to the indigenous Wayuu people. The Wayuu are mostly herders but also master deep-sea divers, known for collecting pearls from the Caribbean Sea.
The peninsula is populated chiefly by xeric scrubland, which is home to a large variety of flora and fauna. The National Natural Park of Macuira, established in 1977, is a tropical oasis located in the La Guajira Desert. The park covers 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) in La Guajira's only mountain chain and ranges in altitude from sea level to 450 metres (1,480 ft). It has a warm climate that averages about 27 °C (81 °F).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “La Guajira Desert” is desert in Colombia and Venezuela. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Guajira, Desert and desert, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q637508. Authority coordinates are 12.072, -71.598. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “La Guajira Desert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.