Venezuela has one of the most bizarre things in the world, called Catatumbo. It’s a rare natural phenomenon of eternal lightning that occurs only at the mouth of the Catatumbo River, at Lake Maracaibo Catatumbo.

Mysteriously, this is a cloud lightning with bolts of 5 kilometers length. For ten hours each night for up to 160 nights per year, the lightning puts on a show like a wild Fourth of July night in America. These remarkable lightning bolts strike over 280 times per hour, with engineers reporting an intensity of 400,000 amperes. The fantastic “light show” can be seen in a radius of 400 kilometers (248.5 miles).

Scientists say that this seemingly eternal lightning storm is from the collision of winds off the steep Andes Mountains. Sailors through the ages have used this almost permanent lightning storm to navigate in the region along the ocean.