Salto Angel

There is a beautiful place that belongs in Venezuela. It is a place of profound beauty, deep lagoons, lush forests, of hundreds of species of pumas, birds, and orchids among others. It is also home to the highest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls. The Spanish name for the falls is Salto Angel, and they lie inside Canaima National Park, one of the largest parks in the world.

Getting to Angel Falls is a, for lack of a better word, project. First you need to be in Venezuela. Then you need to fly into Canaima National Park, as it is home to the falls and is accessible only by air. After your lovely flight with gorgeous views of the park as seen below, you will then embark on a 4-hour long canoe ride and a half hour hike, before finally laying eyes on the death-defying, breathtakingly high falls.

The name Canaima means "Spirit of Evil" and the park covers 30, 000 square kilometers. It became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1994, and has many wonderful sights of extensive flora and fauna. Before our 4-hour long canoe ride to the falls, we also had just enough time to shoot the breeze atop one of the beautiful, smaller waterfalls in the lagoon of the Canaima park.

This American guy Jimmie Angel (real name James Crawford) discovered Angel falls by accident in 1933, when he flew over the area looking for gold. He landed his plane right on top of the falls, but couldn't fly his flamingo decorated monoplane out again, because the wheels got stuck in the mud. The plane stayed there until the 70's. Lucky he did, or maybe I would never have taken this photo at the bottom.

The falls drop 3230 feet over the Auyán-tepui mountain. To put that into perspective and compare, the drop at Niagara falls is 165 feet. After the main drop, there is also about 400 meters of outpouring rapids and about another 100 foot plunge bringing the water even further downstream. The falls flow into the Churun River, a smaller part of the Carrao River, which is in turn a smaller part of the Orinoco River.

And then, somewhere along that water's path at the bottom, we went for a light swim.

And so, after seeing the tallest waterfall on earth and having swam at its base, we packed our things, said goodbye and continued on in search of more adventures. Another natural world wonder had been seen, heard and experienced. And what other wonderful feats awaited, we knew not, but we certainly could not wait to find out.

Bailey Sue