Catatumbo
Catatumbo lightning
The highest concentration of lightning on earth can be found where Lake Maracaibo meets the Catatumbo River.
About 260 days a year, no-rain lightning storms light up the sky all night long - thirty flashes a minute for up to nine hours, to be exact.
Sailors have embraced this unexplained phenomenon for centuries, using the Catatumbo lightning as a beacon.
When Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci sailed into Lake Maracaibo in 1499 heading for the flashes, he encountered a city of huts built on stilts. He called the floating city "Little Venice": Venezuela.