Trinidad: La Brea Pitch Lake

Pitch Lake is argueably the number one attraction in Trinidad. It is the world’s largest deposit of asphalt – it covers 400 thousand square meters and is 87 meters deep and contains over 6 million tonnes of purest asphalt. The lake lies at the intersection of two tectonic plates and a crack allows the material to sip up to the surface, as such the lake is getting constantly refilled. The raw asphalt gets extracted here, then moisture is squeezed out, and the dry asphalt is exported all over the world, although the exports have declined significantly given it’s relatively expensive.
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