Bolts from the blue
Trip Start
Nov 29, 2007
1
4
12
Trip End
Dec 30, 2007
Merida,
Venezuela
Friday, December 7, 2007
The trip to Maracaibo is interesting in itself and we stopped off at couple of places along the way. The most interesting of all was the vulture hang-out, on the cliff above the river where they perch in bad taste on someone's shrine (not actually a grave but it looks like one), and where we had a great view of them wheeling around below and above us. Also present was a road-side hawk with red wings.
One interesting aspect of this fairly damp area, where the mountains are covered in cloud forest, is that part way down the valley you enter a micro-climate that is actually desert - very dry hills, serious erosion and no large plants to speak of other than cactus. Either side of it the hills are covered in ferns and decent sized trees.
Industry
We had brief stops at a sugar factory and coffee plantation. The sugar factory is pretty basic but more advanced than the mezcal factory we saw in Oaxaca where the grinding is done by a donkey. Here the sugar cane is crushed by a machine and the extracted liquid then boiled down to a gluggy consistency in a series of open vats fired from the crushed cane. The steam from these vats makes the place look like it is on fire. The final mixture is then scooped into blocks and left to dry. It doesn't much resemble sugar at this stage but rather enormous lumps of fudge.
The coffee operation seemed higher tech.
Better lightning
There is a machine for skinning the beans and drying the beans and husking the beans, and then they are exported for roasting. Animals
We saw mostly birds on the way down the river and out to the lake. The osprey or fishing eagle was the most impressive but other raptors included
vultures (yellow headed and turkey), swallow tail kite, black collared hawks, a curious falcon that feeds solely on snails. It is called a snail falcon. We also saw various wading birds, such as the blue heron, the capped heron, great egret and flocks of the cattle egret.
On the lake itself we found a couple of pink river dolphins who proved to be very shy, and a very sick caiman - apparently an unprecedented sight on the lake. The lake itself is vast, a muddy brown and dotted with water lilies.
Lightning
Alan is a butterfly expert with a new sub-species of the blue morpho to his credit, but he has also made quite a study of the catatumbo lightning.
The way it works is strangely predictable.
In the evenings, at around 7pm lightning often starts in an arc between the west and north west. This lightning tends to be reddish and it was the night we were there too. There were no bolts of lightning but there would be a pulse lighting the sky orange. The regularity of this lightning is such that it became known as the Catatumbo lighthouse and the Spanish apparently navigated by it. Its regularity is something of a mystery but thought to be linked the shallow lakes in the region sending warm air upwards as the surrounding air cools. In hot days the lakes can warm to 40 degrees.
Catatumbo lightning
This lightning can be pulsing away at 40 flashes a minute or more on a good night, although it was not that frequent for us. An additional spectacle was the ghostly forms of fishing bats cruising around our little house and emitting the occasional audible shriek.Then everything goes quiet by 10pm at the latest, and then Big Momma starts at about 2.30 am, although very often it is much later than that, in an arc from the north east through to the east with the biggest activity typically in the east. This is the really spectacular stuff with massive bolts of lightning that singe the retina. It is thought to be caused by the warmth raising from lake Maracaibo and the cool air sinking from the Andes which surround the lake. They meet over the area where Big Momma forms.
Our lightning started right on 2.30 am and was impressive. Big rumbling detonations would light up the sky - and I mean most of the visible sky over about a 45 degree arc - and then sometimes add a brilliant white bolt of lightning. I wasn't able to catch any of these in a way that does them justice, but Alan's photos are sensational. Things started to simmer down for a while and then started up again around 3.30. This was announced by two pulsing points of light, one almost directly above us and the other to the west. They pulsed alternately like stuttering fluorescent bulbs, and then the lightning started in earnest in he east. The effect was amazing because the night was otherwise totally black, only lit by the explosions of light which sometimes resolved into an intense white bolt.
Later on some action moved back to the north with flares that turned the whole northern sector of the sky purple and almost orange.
Congo
It looked like it was building for something big. Alan said what was coming were Freddy Krugers, ie horizontal bolts branching like claws. But then the rain came back with a vengeance which apparently stymies this phenomenon. Still it was a pretty good storm, and we stayed up watching it until it got light when the storm peters out. Congo
On the way home we drifted through the main street of the stilt-village, Congo. I was surprised to see pet cats and dogs marooned on the houses but looking happy enough.
It's a nice little village and it is villages like this that got Venezuela its name (little Venice). People get around in boats and by any other material that floats. We saw one lady paddling something that looked like a plastic coated mattress. The kids paddle around in plastic drums with one side cut out.
Following a tributary back out of the lake we sure an endemic and highly prized bird called a northern screamer which looks rather like a heron sized ostrich that can fly. We also came across a family skinning a couple of iguanas while a cat watched with eager anticipation. Another example of a national park not doing its job.
We stopped in a lovely placid river of black (yes, black) water on the way back to look for butterflies and Alan caught a blue morpho, and we saw the brilliant blue sub-species that he discovered.
