“Once upon a time there was a wind called Aurora. His body was all made of moving air. Aurora was born from the breath of a goddess in the Atlantic Ocean, and lived in motion, going up and down, up and down, up and down, near the mountains and also near the river valleys. Aurora's best friend was the serpent Quetza, who always traveled with Aurora to many different places.

Quetza was a serpent made of water that flew, it was like a flying river. It was formed by immense volumes of water vapor that came from the Atlantic Ocean, and it sometimes descends in the form of rain in the Amazon – where all the xapiris of the enchanted forest live, magical beings very colorful in the shape of all the animals that we know, capybaras, armadillos and jaguars. 

The Amazon is the biggest rainforest in the world!! It is very green and the xapiri have lived there since before our great-grandparents were born. It's been a long time. About 2 million years ago!

And Quetza, the flying serpent of blue water, after flying through the Amazon, continues to the Andes, finding the enormous rocky wall that makes it deviate and float over Bolivia, Paraguay and the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul South, Minas Gerais and São Paulo; sometimes reaching as far as Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.

And you can't even imagine the size of this serpent formed of water! It is three kilometers high, hundreds of kilometers wide and thousands of kilometers long. Quetza is so big that, on some days of the year, it is as if a river the size of the Amazon River crossed the skies of Brazil. 

Every time the sky is cloudy, Quetza, the flying serpent of blue water, is flying in the air, above the clouds, being carried by the Aurora wind, and carrying water from one side to the other, from the Amazon to São Paulo, so that everything gets wet and all the plants and animals can drink water at will in Brazil.” 

Story written by Jonaya de Castro – Journalist and Director of Labexperimental.org – in May 2022.
This material, which deals with the subject of flying rivers in a playful way, was designed to be used in the classroom.