Business & Finance: Captain & Concession

(See front cover)

Nine months of the year the northeast trade winds blow across the Gulf of Venezuela into Colombia, where the Andes taper off in three great wrinkles in the earth's crust. As the warm, moist trades are deflected upward by the first mountain range the air is cooled, releasing part of its burden of rain. In the tropical night an almost continuous electrical display can be seen along the mountain peaks, resembling successive flashes of sheet lightning. This phenomenon is called the "Catatumbo Lights," after the Catatumbo River, which rises in Colombia...

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