Lake · Venezuela
Lake Valencia
Lake Valencia lies in a basin between mountains in northern Venezuela, near the cities of Valencia and Maracay. It is the largest freshwater lake in Venezuela, and no river carries its water to the sea.
Picture credit: Daniel Garcia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · María Auxiliadora Ramírez Prato (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Valencia?
Countries on its shores: Venezuela.
Largest lake of: Venezuela.
Middle of the lake: 10.18° N, 67.73° W
The story behind it
Several rivers flow into Lake Valencia, and the Aragua River is the most important of them. But no river flows out, so the water can only leave the lake by evaporating into the air. The lake is about 30 kilometres long and has a number of small islands, and people live on some of them. In 1800 the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt visited the lake. He saw that the farms around it were changing the lake and the land, and this helped him form early ideas about how people can change nature and even the climate. For a long time the water level sank, because a lot of water was taken for the fields. Later it began to rise again, because water from neighbouring valleys is now led into the lake. Sadly, dirty water from the towns makes green algae grow, and between 1960 and 1990 more than half of the lake's own kinds of fish disappeared.
Find it on the globe
Lake Valencia is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lake Valencia?
Lake Valencia covers about 350 km², but some sources give up to 390 km², because the water level goes up and down. The lake is about 30 kilometres long.
Where does the water of the lake go?
No river flows out of Lake Valencia. The water only leaves the lake by evaporating into the air.
Which famous explorer visited the lake?
In 1800 the explorer Alexander von Humboldt came to Lake Valencia. He noticed that the farms around the lake were changing it, and he thought about how people can change nature.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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