Venezuela | The Best Travel Destinations

Mount Roraima – Venezuela/Brazil/Guyana

Mount Roraima – Venezuela/Brazil/Guyana

Mount Roraima (also known as Roraima Tepui or Cerro Roraima in Spanish, and Monte Roraima in Portuguese) is the highest of the Pakaraima chain of tepui plateau in South America. First described by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in 1596, its 31 km² summit area is defended by 400-metre-tall cliffs on all sides. The mountain includes the triple border point of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana.

Mount Roraima lies on the Guiana Shield in the southeastern corner of Venezuela’s 30000 km² Canaima National Park forming the highest peak of Guyana’s Highland Range. The tabletop mountains of the park are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth, dating back to some two billion years ago in the Precambrian.

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Angel Falls – Venezuela

Angel Falls – Venezuela

Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world, drops nearly a kilometer (about 979m total drop with 807m freefall) from a table-top mountain (tepuy or tepui in the indigenous Pemón language). The tepuy is known as Auyantepuy (or Auyantepui meaning “Mountain of the God of Evil” or “Devil’s Mountain”).

The waterfall’s existence seems like a paradox as it’s neither fed by conventional drainage sources such as snow/glacier melt, lakes, nor a major river system. Instead, the abundance of water responsible for the falls is practically all rainfall from equatorial tropical clouds condensing onto the cloud forest above plateau of Auyantepui. It’s almost as if the clouds wring its water onto the tepui like a soaked rag. Continue reading Angel Falls – Venezuela

Angel Falls – The Tallest Waterfall in the World

Angel Falls – The Tallest Waterfall in the World

Angel Falls is located in the Guayana highlands, one of five topographical regions of Venezuela. It plunges off the edge of a “Tepuy”, or table-top mountain, and free falls 2,421 feet to the river below, making it the tallest waterfalls on earth.

In total it is 15 times higher than Niagara Falls with a total of 2,937 feet.

The falls are named after Jimmy Angel, an adventurous bush pilot from Missouri (Used to fly with Lindbergh’s Flying Circus), today a modern legend. Jimmy Angel first saw the falls in 1933 with McCracken while searching for a legendary Gold Ore.

Jimmy returned again in 1937 with his wife, Gustavo Henry, and Henry’s gardener, they landed on top of the tepuy. Jimmy’s Flamingo monoplane settled down into the marshy ground on top of the Auyantepuy and remained there for 33 years before being lifted out by a helicopter.

Jimmy Angel and his three companions managed to descend the tepuy and make their way back to civilization in 11 days.

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