Puerto Ordaz and San Felix, Bolívar State, Guayana Region, Venezuela

🇻🇪 Ciudad Guayana is a city in Bolívar State, Venezuela. It stretches 40 km along the south bank of the Orinoco river, at the point where it is joined by its main tributary, the Caroní river. The Caroni crosses the city south-north and divides it on its two main halves: the old town of

San Félix in the east, and the new town of

Puerto Ordaz in the west. The city was officially founded in 1961 by the unification of this two former settlements, but the history of San Félix goes back to its foundation in 1724. Within the city limits are located the site of Cachamay Falls and Llovizna Falls. There are three bridges across the Caroni and the second crossing over the Orinoco, the Orinoquia Bridge, was inaugurated in the city in 2006. With approximately one million people, it is Venezuela's fastest-growing city due to its important iron, steel, aluminium and hydroelectric industries. Ciudad Guayana is one of Venezuela's five most important ports, since most goods produced in the industry-rich Bolívar state are shipped through it, as ocean-going vessels can sail to it from the Atlantic Ocean up the Orinoco river.

Due to its planned nature, the city has a drastically different feel from many other South American cities. The towers of the Alta Vista district recall Barranquilla, and many of the residential neighborhoods have architecture and landscaping that are similar to suburbs in the United States in the 1950s, 70 and 80, including 'cookie cutter' homes, sidewalks, and patterned lawns. This is an artifact due to the presence in the 1960s and early 1970s of US Steel, an American company with iron mining operations in the region. US Steel built housing for hundreds of its American immigrant workers and families, who lived in Puerto Ordaz and other communities until the nationalisation of the Venezuelan steel industry forced the company and its workers to leave.

Puerto Ordaz is one of the 2 best planned cities in all of South America, from Mexico to Cabo de Hornos, Argentina. It was designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Its internal forest parks look like a fully developed country. And its avenues are extraordinarily planned. The city has strong descendants of Europeans who helped create it, make it grow and give it an air very different from any city in South America, since WW2.

The city is very strategic for Venezuela. Many personalities have visited it during its young history, from Pope John Paul II until many former presidents, such as G.W. Bush, artists, filmmakers like Spielberg who used the city parks to make shots for movies, and others.

Guayana City is served by Manuel Carlos Piar International Airport in Puerto Ordaz.