Lightning Reactions

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Another early start at 7am, and a long drive to witness an unusual phenomenon which is unique to Venezuela; the Catatumbo Lightning. There is a particular area, no more than 20 kilometres square, where lightning occurs continually at night. Strikes occur between 30 and 100 times a minute, apparently enough to read a book by. But curiously, these strikes are not accompanied by thunder. Scientists have studied this phenomenon, but no-one really knows why it occurrs, or why it only occurs here. It is not a guaranteed occurance however. On average it will occur about 300 nights each year. Would we be lucky enough to see it?

We undertook our two day expedition with an extremely knowledgable guide called Alan Highton, a reknowned naturalist who has worked on various TV documentaries. The Catatumbo Lightning was one of his specialties, and from looking at the weather patterns on the way, he said conditions were favourable. Alan was also the biggest repository of awful jokes, and we had to endure these for the whole journey, a constant bombardment. Although some of them did make me chuckle. Such as... Why do scuba divers enter the water backwards? Because if they went forwards, they´d end up back in the boat.

After three hours by van and another three hours by boat, we were on Lake Maracaibo, South America´s largest lake. A gargantuan body of water 200 kilometres across. Our destination was a remote village called Congo Mirador, a village on the water supported by stilts. It was a complete water-based community with locals cruising house to house by boat, and kids making the same journies by paddling around in washing tubs. The whole village was divided into "streets" with electricity cables and streetlights criss-crossing the waterways. Apparently some people here have never set foot on dry land, except to visit their local cemetary.

We stayed at the local firestation, stringing hammocks on the outside decks. Alan had estimated a 7pm start, and at 7:05pm we saw our first strike. They built slowly until we were seeing about 15 strikes a minute. Unfortunately a number of inconsiderate clouds were in the way, so we saw muffled flashes instead of the actual strikes.

Two hours later, things had calmed down, but Alan assured us they would start up again later. He woke us from our hammocks at 1am, and was going off! The clouds were still stubbornly in place, but the lightshow was phenomenal. Clouds were lighting up everywhere in dramatic bursts, and it was like an apocalyptic scene as if warheads and bombs were being detonated all around us. At it´s peak we were seeing 80 flashes a minute. Well worth the journey, and the jokes. A highlight of my trip so far

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Photos

Ambushed by Bandits!
Not really. This was our supply boat having a joke. If you look closely, the "guns" are actually a pair of flip-flops

Local Transport
Kids moving between houses using anything that floats

Precarious transport
Two kids carefully balancing on a makeshift raft

Our assistant photographers
Waiting on the pier for sunset

Sunset
The lightning wasn´t far away

Three strikes and you´re out
A triple-fork of lighting

Daylight?
Nope. This was taken at 1am, when the lightning was reaching a peak of 70 strikes a minute behind the clouds