Catatumbo!

The weekend was another adventure to say the least : ) A group of students and I along with our trusty Venezuelan guide, Tony, ventured north to Lake Maracaibo in search of the natural lightening phenomenon at Catatumbo. According to Tony, who is literally the South American Steve Erwin (this guy catches piranhas and alligators bare-handed for fun), Catatumbo is one of four places in the world where the unique combination of a warm and cold front collide over open water composed of 50/50 sea and salt water to create methane gas and spark silent lightening 24 hours a day, 375 days of the year. We were in search of the phenomenon. Even though Tony had not been back to Catatumbo in ten years he wanted to take us to the heart of the storm. We jumped into jeeps and crossed the country side-filled with small towns crying over funerals, hanging entire cow meat and working plantain farms, we reached open water. After an interesting lunch of fish fried whole (and the daily avoidance of fruits and vegetables unless soaked with vinegar), fights over hand sanitizer and real toilets, we split into two boats and started cruising down stream through the rainforest!

I had never experienced anything like it, it was beyond incredible watching monkeys swing from trees, iguanas, tropical birds and alligators create a backdrop as we sped onward. We approached open water and our little fishing boats seemed to be swallowed by the immensity of lake Maracaibo. I was shocked to see dolphins swim alongside our boats-you really should have seen us, we looked like Asian tourists trying to take photos. My eyes were popping with this completely new outdoors experience. It even became nonchalant to see another monkey, or have a tropical bird fly over our boats. We returned back into rivers and I was continuously amazed by the occasional ‘homes’ interrupting the flow of tropical nature. These people seemed to pop out of book, little shacks sprinkling the side of the river with yelling children, cows, chickens, practically living on top of one another. We passed families teaming to clean fish, and living practically sans-clothes by the means solely of the river. I have seen poverty to some extremes but no living conditions as interesting as this.

Everyone in our boat thinking we were leaving these shacks to cradle in some tourist-like cabin on the lake, began to soon realize we were wrong. Very wrong. Reaching open water once more we sped up to an actual village on stilts, little houses like the ones we saw along stream sprouting up from the lake in paint-faded clusters. In shock, we were told to put on clothes (we were in swim suits by this time in 95+ heat) because they don’t often see people dressed like us or gringos alone. I could not get over the complexity of living in a ‘house’ with legs and even more surprised to see that Chavez had given them electricity. We were finally in a part of Venezuela where Chavez was fully appreciated along with his given medical aid. (Several years ago he plucked up medical aids from Cuba and planted them among villages like this one.)We boated passed people waving from wooden homes with hammocks and scattered piles of fish to what would be our home for the night. We docked out boats at the village medical center and unpacked our boats that now felt strange to be filled with backpacks, bottled water and coolers.

We strung hammocks and mosquito nets along the outskirts of the shack and a few placed inside avoiding the lone wooden medical table, which actually was put to use through the night from a women with a sting-ray sting, a man with teeth in his hand (not sure what bit him?) and one of our own students…who needed a few shots after eating bad catfish (Its amazing how careful we have to be here). After more of Tony’s tales and hearing the that bats flying all around us potentially have rabbis, we waited up late on the dock for the phenomenon which turned out be amazing but a backdrop in comparison to our experiences of the day. Still, the silent bolts of strange lightening as promised drew us in to Catatumbo. After sleeping in the hammocks (which turned out to be pretty great) we left before rain set in the next day but not after paying respects to the village church on that Sunday, oh and visiting little houses that had pigs and roosters on them. We returned by and boat and jeep and proceeded to go paragliding....

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