Definition of "cordillera" []

• An extensive chain of mountains or mountain ranges, especially the principal mountain system of a continent. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The road, challenged enough in the desolation of the desert tries to stick to the longitudinal valleys that run beneath the cordillera."
• "The Patía Valley is a dry pocket surrounded by the cloud forests of the Central and Western cordilleras, and it is dissected by the Patía river, which flows from the Central massif westwards and breaks the Western cordillera to drain into the Pacific ocean."
• "A branch of the hotspot spreads east around the northern extent of the Colombian western and central cordillera, through the dry forests along the Caribbean coast as far as the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and south into the Cauca and Magdalena valleys."