Lightning
© ABC News
It's a mysterious jam session of light...hammered all night, nearly every night. There's 40,000 bolts of lightning up to 300 nights a year.

The indigenous people of northwest Venezuela near the Catatumbo River call this phenomenon "Ri Ba-Ba" (or the River of Fire in the Sky). Scientists know it as one of the lightning capitals of the world

Our guide is Alan Highton, who photographs the lightning and lives on the lake with villagers...

Alan Highton: "The lightning to them is like cars on the street to someone in New York City."

The truth is scientists still aren't sure how any lightning, much less the "Ri Ba Ba", is created.

Highton: "My own opinion is there is a very intense low pressure in this entire basin. And, as night falls and this causes these towering clouds in several different places, you can get 6 or 7 lighting storms around you at the same time."

Matt Gutman, reporting: "NASA pictures show the intensity of an electrical storm about to kick off...lightning so punctual, so predictable we set up lawn chairs and train our cameras skyward and at midnight, just as predicted...the lightning explodes all around us..."