LIGHTNING OF THE CATATUMBO …. ETERNAL STORM.

In this opportunity I write to them on a natural phenomenon that it happens for centuries, the strange and only spectacle in the world comes producing to him in the river mouth of the river Catatumbo with the lake Maracaibo (in Zulia's Venezuelan State). It is called Catatumbo's Lightning. This celestial marvel is the grandest and endless symphony of beams and light that the nature can offer us, since the thunderstorms that are formed burn with nothing less that between 30 and 60 beams per minute (almost one per second), approximately 3.000 per hour, and they can manage to reach the gewgaw of approximately 1,5 million beams a year.

A record realized by the spatial American agency FISHNET and for the universities of Maryland and Alabama (both in USA) and that of Sao Paulo (Brazil), they confirmed that the lake of Maracaibo is the "capital" of the lightnings in the Earth.

"The Organization Guinness delivered on January 28, 2014 the certification that it recognizes to the Lightning of the Catatumbo, the meteorological only phenomenon " it is said HISTORY, that the books of history show that the lightning has had a preponderant paper for Venezuela, that during the war for the independence of Venezuela in 1823, the impressive sparkles of the lightning ignited the sky per hours and betrayed to the Spanish navy that was trying to slip away towards the shore.

The explanation of this natural beauty resides in the high Andean mountain chains that make a detour to the lake and the entry of trade hot winds to the same one for the only natural opening that exists towards the Caribbean sea. In the late afternoon, when the lake is warmer, a lot of evaporation takes place. The winds that come are loaded with dampness and go towards the walls of the mountainous country of the Perijá and mountain chain of Merida, with altitudes of up to 5.000 meters on the level of the sea. When the winds hit against them, they ascend, cool, condense and these storms are formed by a monstrous electrical load. The methane liberated by the marshes of the zone would help to the formation of the lightnings, a not definitive theory.

THE CONGO VIEWING-POINT … DISAPPEARING

In the municipality Catatumbo of the condition Zulia, The Congo rests Viewing-point, a people palafítico, mixes of aborigens and Spanish that it protects in his entrails to the impressive natural phenomenon Lightning of the Catatumbo. Because of it, the region is a magnet for tourists, but paradoxically, The Congo Viewing-point, before known as a water people, it settled almost in its entirety up to the point of which alone three of his channels have minimal levels of water for the step of boats and boats known like peñeros. The small lacustrine population who was living of the hunters' tourism of lightnings faces one of the worst economic crises of his history and is on the verge of disappearing.

he place knew better times. Before the economy was flowing thanks to the tourism: they were selling sodas, food, cigars, different provisions. There was rumba, liquor, bullaranga (noise).
The dredging of the Rio Catatumbo is the principal need of The Congo Viewing-point, due to the fact that the sedimentation in the site has come to the point of obstructing the step of the boats to the palafittes. The autoridades they have initiated the dredging in the zone and one expects to conclude this process in order that the normality is returned to the water people.

The people had 930 inhabitants at the end of the 70s, in agreement with the book " The Congo Viewing-point, people palafítico of the Lake of Maracaibo ", of the doctor and writer Darío Novoa Montero. His population overcame the thousand at the beginning of this century. Now, 90 % of his people has left to firm land for the economic crisis and the sedimentation, there calculate those who still remain in the people.

Let's hope that the situation could improve for the inhabitants of this municipality and reactivating the tourism that implies so important and amazing natural phenomenon.