Wind On The Venezuelan Savanna

The smooth savannah grass lets the wind wash over the land without a fight, easily slipping past the short blades, making the whole landscape yield to the power of the slightest breeze. You hunker down close to the ground, slipping a blanket over your body, and stare up at the magnificent sky, accepting the absolute power of the earth out here in the middle of nowhere. Savannas are frequently in a transitional zone between forest and desert or prairie. Savanna covers approximately 20% of the Earth's land area. The largest area of savanna is in Africa. Although the term savanna is believed to have originally come from an Arawak word describing "land which is without trees but with much grass either tall or short", by the late 1800s it was used to mean "land with both grass and trees". It now refers to land with grass and either scattered trees or an open canopy of trees. Spanish explorers familiar with the term "sabana" called the grasslands they found around the Orinoco River "llanos", as well as calling Venezuelan and Colombian grasslands by that specific term. "Cerrado" was used on the higher savannas of the Brazilian Central Plateau. Many grassy landscapes and mixed communities of trees, shrubs, and grasses were described as savanna before the middle of the 19th century, when the concept of a tropical savanna climate became established.