GLOBETROTTERS MONTHLY CHALLENGE

The Pristine Beauty of Angel Falls

Above and below the highest waterfall in the world

There is often a debate about the total height of a waterfall. Many do not fall in a single drop but hit some surface, then drop again. Perhaps several times. Do you count all the drops? What if they are far apart?

I’d just as well let someone else worry about that. Angel Falls (Salto Ángel in Spanish) is in southern Venezuela, in the Canaima National Park. It has a recorded vertical drop of 979 meters, which includes a few sloped cascade falls at the bottom. However, this measurement was taken from a distant survey with a margin of error. It could be that Tugela Falls, near the South Africa/Lesotho border, is higher.

What makes Angel Falls an incredible place to visit isn’t just the waterfall itself.

First, the falls are not accessible by road. Nearly everyone coming here must fly and then go by boat. The region around it is undeveloped and very sparsely populated for over a hundred kilometers, inhabited only by indigenous people who use the rivers as highways. The Canaima National Park, in which Angel Falls sits, is the sixth largest in the world with an area of 30,000 square kilometers.

Secondly, the Rio Carrao, which must be navigated by a motorized canoe for some distance upstream to arrive at the trailhead for Angel Falls, is either exciting or nerve-wracking, depending on your idea of fun. The water level fluctuates greatly depending on the season, with rock hazards appearing and disappearing quickly. During the dry season (December-March), getting a canoe up the river can be nearly impossible, and the waterfall slows to a trickle that evaporates before hitting the bottom.

Thirdly, the rainforest and mountains are nearly untouched with spectacular scenery. Other waterfalls on the way to Angel Falls are also worthwhile to experience.

There is no way to just jump off your flight at the Canaima airstrip and walk to the falls. A tour has to be purchased from a city elsewhere in Venezuela that includes the flight, boat trip, and lodging. There are lodges of varying luxury, or lack thereof, near the Canaima airstrip and camps upriver on the Carrao. The ones I stayed in upriver were simple, thatched roofs with hammocks and dining tables underneath.

The motorized canoes take visitors from their lodgings to a trailhead on the bank of the river, where a 30-minute trail leads everyone to the standard waterfall viewpoint. The trail is rocky and goes through thick rainforest.

The above photo is a good overview of the smaller waterfalls near the airport, where many tourist lodges are located. The above photo was taken during the rainy season, so the volume of water was near maximum.

I’ve visited Angel Falls by boat twice, on trips about ten years apart. Not much had changed from one trip to the next, maybe a few more tourist lodges at the airstrip and more boats whizzing up the river. But the rivers, rainforests, and mountains hadn’t been touched, and I doubt it looks any different today. Tourism has stagnated for many years, given the economic and internal security issues that have plagued Venezuela. That does appear to be changing now, with 2023 marking a large increase in international arrivals, at least according to this article.

Angel Falls descends from the top of Auyantepui. Tepuis are flat-topped mountains, like mesas in the southwestern United States. They are geologically similar to mesas: horizontally layered, resistant sandstone that erodes when sections peel off the sides and collapse. The formation that makes up Auyantepui is ancient even for rocks, about 1.7 to 2 billion years. For an article discussing a tepui in a different part of Venezuela, please read:

It is possible to hike to the top of Auyantepui. Excursions to do this were available years ago, and perhaps they still are. However, the Pemon people, who call this region home, consider the mountain dangerous and have historically avoided it. It is their willingness, helped along by the employment the park offers, that makes trips possible.

Angel Falls is named after Jimmie Angel, a pilot from the USA who flew over them in 1933. He was following a description of a ‘high waterfall’ given to him by an earlier explorer of the region. He returned four years later and landed his plane on the top of the tepui but damaged the landing gear. He and his wife were forced to climb down to the nearest village, an ordeal that took them eleven days. The name ‘Angel Falls’ stuck from then on. It took 33 years for the airplane to be extracted from the mountain and airlifted to Ciudad Bolívar (200 km north). Today, it is on display outside the local airport.

Of course, the falls have a Pemon name, Kerepakupai Merú. Under the presidency of Hugo Chavez (1998–2013), there was a push to change the name back to the original. But the effort never resulted in an official action.

I’ve also visited Angel Falls by helicopter. Before you jump to conclusions about my personal finances, I did not pay for the ride. It was a freebie tagged on to some helicopter-based geological exploration work I did in the region. More than the falls themselves, what I remember most about that trip was the otherworldly topography and vegetation on and around Auyantepui and the other tepuis in the region.

Angel Falls easily lives up to its fame, whether or not it is indeed the highest waterfall in the world. But, for me at least, the pristine beauty of the Canaima National Park in general has always been the real magnet. May it stay like this for another geological eon!

This article was submitted for the Globetrotters Monthly Challenge, Waterfalls.

I enjoyed this entry by JoAnn Ryan about Idaho Falls on the Snake River, a part of the USA I know well:

Adrienne Beaumont presents waterfalls in both the Philippines and Croatia:

Oksana Kukurudza's Sunflowers Rarely Break anticipated the March challenge ahead of time and speaks about two famous and distinctly different waterfalls, both of which are well worth the effort to see:

Thank you for reading! And thank you, Globetrotters editors JoAnn Ryan, Anne Bonfert, Michele Maize, and Adrienne Beaumont. Please check my profile for other travel-related articles at Brad Yonaka.