Pitch Lake

Pitch Lake, in the village of La Brea on the southwestern coast of Trinidad, is the largest of only three major natural asphalt (pitch) lakes in the world, covering roughly 40 hectares to a depth estimated at 75 metres in places, formed where crude oil rising along a geological fault has its lighter fractions evaporate, leaving behind the thick, semi-solid bitumen that continually wells up and slowly circulates within the lake. The asphalt has been commercially extracted since the 19th century — Sir Walter Raleigh reportedly used pitch from the lake to caulk his ships in 1595 — and an estimated 10 million tonnes have been removed over more than a century of mining, yet the lake continues to replenish itself from below at roughly the same rate.

According to oral tradition attributed to the Indigenous Chaima people, the lake formed as divine punishment after the inhabitants of a village on the site killed and ate sacred hummingbirds, said to be the embodied spirits of their ancestors — an act of such disrespect that the earth opened beneath the village and swallowed it whole, leaving the pitch lake in its place. The story is sometimes cited by visitors pointing to occasional reports of artefacts, and in earlier centuries, claims of preserved animal remains, surfacing from the asphalt, although no scientifically verified human remains have ever been recovered. The lake's surface, while solid enough to walk on in most areas, contains pockets of softer, hotter asphalt and has occasionally claimed animals and, rarely, people who wandered into unstable areas, lending continued credence to its reputation as a place that "swallows" what it touches.