You cannot swim in this lake … There are no fish in it … But you can walk along Peach Lake …
This is one of the most amazing lakes on our planet and it is located on the island of Trinidad. It consists of … asphalt. Moreover, the asphalt is of high quality. They are covered by the islanders, and not only them. For example, one of the most symbolically loaded roads in the world is Pall Mall in London, which leads to Buckingham Palace, paved with natural asphalt from Peach Lake.
Lake Peach Lake, located near the village of La Brea, is small - its area is about forty hectares. The depth, however, is impressive - more than eighty meters. Of course, it does not resemble any other lake - it is a foundation pit filled with a semi-liquid black mass …
Hundreds of tons of natural asphalt are scooped out of Peach Lake every year, but its level does not go down: the underground bitumen "plant" works efficiently, replenishing what people take.
The surface of the lake is elastic and oily, if you try to "scoop up" its "water", it will stretch with threads of thick tar. This lake can not be called motionless - it has its own life, though not at all like life in other lakes.
In the depths of Peach Lake something is constantly boiling … And on the surface, strange thick waves slowly diverge towards the shore from the center, when a new portion of tar rises from the depths. Or it suddenly begins to bubble - this is how sulfurous gases rise to its surface from the depths.
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The lake has been known for a long time. Walter Raleigh, an English navigator and organizer of pirate expeditions in the 16th century, used the local asphalt to cover the hull of his ship and noted with satisfaction that it was better than resin, because it did not melt in the sun.
The lake's asphalt looks so dense that it can be used for its intended purpose - to walk on it, and even drive. The filling of the lake is a non-Newtonian liquid, i.e. a liquid that is dense under sharp loads, but if the load is soft, then the asphalt mass will also be soft. Therefore, one should not delude oneself - it is capable of cunningly devouring, say, an animal that naively wandered into its shaky soil. When asphalt was mined from Peach Lake, bones of dinosaurs once swallowed by the lake were found in its very depths.
How is such a strange phenomenon possible? It turns out that a depression about 80 meters deep, which was once the crater of a volcano, and is now connected to its vent. And oil, slowly rising to the surface, loses some of its volatile substances. And then, reacting with organic matter that gets into the "waters" of the lake in different ways, it becomes the very substance that is so beneficial and convenient to cover roads.
Asphalt lakes, which are a product of the weathering of accumulated oil, are also known in California, in the Red Sea region, in Turkmenistan on the island. Cheleken and in other places. On about. Sakhalin is known for several asphalt lakes, one of which has an area of about 3 hectares …
Such asphalt lakes have been known for a very long time, and asphalt was used in construction work. The city of Babylon in the VI-VII century BC was surrounded by a wall, during the construction of which asphalt, mined in the Red Sea region, was used as a cementing material. It has been established that even several millennia BC, asphalt was used in India for the construction of pools, since the asphalt bottom and walls of the pools are impervious to water.
Oddly enough, there are tiny islands on the lake, on which even puny trees grow. Apparently, in the pockets between the layers of bitumen, over the years, accumulated what became over time soil capable of giving life to plants even in such a strange, seemingly unsuitable place for life.