La Guaira

 

La Guaira (Spanish pronunciation: [la ˈɣwai.ɾa]) is the capital city of the Venezuelan state of Vargas and the country's chief port. It was founded in 1577 as an outlet for Caracas, 30 kilometres (19 mi) to the southeast. The town and the port were badly damaged during the December 1999 floods and mudslides that affected much of the region. Today, La Guaira exports cocoa beans, coffee, and tobacco. The city hosts its own professional baseball team in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League, the Tiburones de La Guaira. They have won seven national championships since their founding in 1962.
La Guaira Location in Venezuela
Coordinates: 10°36′0″N 66°55′59″W / 10.6°N 66.93306°W / 10.6; -66.93306
Country	Venezuela
State	Vargas State
Founded	1555
Population
• Metro	270,792

La Guaira (Spanish pronunciation: [la ˈɣwai.ɾa]) is the capital city of the Venezuelan state of Vargas and the country's chief port. It was founded in 1577 as an outlet for Caracas, 30 kilometres (19 mi) to the southeast. The town and the port were badly damaged during the December 1999 floods and mudslides that affected much of the region. Today, La Guaira exports cocoa beans, coffee, and tobacco.

The city hosts its own professional baseball team in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League, the Tiburones de La Guaira. They have won seven national championships since their founding in 1962.

La Guaira Bank

La Guaira Bank (Spanish: El Placer de La Guaira) is an underwater ridge that is approximately 12 miles^[vague] off the coast from the city of La Guaira in Venezuela. The bank is approximately 12 miles (19 km) long from east to west and 4 miles (6 km) wide from north to south, and it rises from 50 fathoms (90 m) in the surrounding area to 140 fathoms (260 m). The area provides the structure deep-sea animals, and other organism such as gorgonians, sponges, and coral, require for ocean currents to bring their food to them. Westerly currents flow off the coast of Venezuela, and the bank acts as a barrier to this current, creating an upwelling of nutrients to the ocean surface from deep-water stockpiles. These nutrients fuel an explosion of planktonic plant and animal growth, and attract larger animals such as whales, porpoises, seabirds, and large pelagics such as tuna, sharks, wahoo, dolphinfish, and four different types of marlin. It is considered one of the top sport fishing destinations of the world due to the unusually high numbers of blue marlin, white marlin, sailfish, and spearfish that congregate at different seasons, and are available year round.
The Venezuelan government, understanding the importance of the sport fishing industry to the community as well as the need to protect this fishery, has enacted regulations that protect these waters from industrial commercial fishing by establishing a fifty-mile-long protection area, allowing only small-scale traditional fishing.

History

The old buildings of the Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas in La Guaira

After the founding of Caracas by Spanish in 1567, toward the turn of the 16th century, the Port of La Guaira emerged on the coast and, since that time, has been the gateway to Caracas. This coastal city, almost without land to develop and bathed by the Caribbean Sea, became an important harbour during the 18th century. Attacked by buccaneers and by the English, Dutch, and French armadas, La Guaira was transformed into a fortified, walled city. During the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–1748), the Battle of La Guaira took place off the coast of La Guaira. This period also saw the trading monopoly of the Royal Gipuzkoan Company of Caracas, which controlled the major ports of La Guaira and Puerto Cabello and was instrumental in the development of large-scale cocoa production along the valleys of the coast. Another small naval battle was fought off La Guaira in 1812, between privateers of the United States and the United Kingdom. Now this is the second port by importance in Venezuela after Port of Puerto Cabello.

 
 Source: Wikipedia free encyclopia