NW Colombia, Venezuela

NW Colombia, Venezuela: Rare view of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (dark, shield-shaped mountains) west of the Gulf of Venezuela, the Guajira and the Paraguaná peninsulas. Panoramic view of the Cordillera Oriental, Colombian Andes (foreground) an area that is almost always obscured by clouds. Cordillera de Mérida is the distant ENE-trending range that lies south of Lake Maracaibo. Santa Marta massif and the Cordillera Oriental are blocks of billion-year-old crust that have been forced up as the Nazca tectonic plate (part of the Pacific) collides with South America.

Photo and caption thanks to:
Earth Sciences and Image Analysis, NASA-Johnson Space Center. 30 Apr. 2003. "Astronaut Photography of Earth - Display Record." http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=STS109&roll=708&frame=79.

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