A day trip to Camp Canaima from Cuidad Guayana on the Orinoco River meant
rising before dawn. I boarded a 727 Avensa jet at Ciudad Guayana on the
Orinoco River for what I thought was to be a normal flight. I soon found out
how wrong I was.
The jungle labyrinth below soon revealed seven cascades converging into a
sherry-red lagoon. Camp Canaima, an oasis in the 11,500-square-mile Canaima
National Park, spreads out along its shore. Two flat-topped promontories
known as tepuis rose through the mist, amidst the deafening roar of the
falls. Struck by the beauty of it all, I had to agree that Canaima was a
"corner of Eden."
But the best was yet to come. The flight to Angel Falls, the world's
highest waterfall, was spectacular. The pilot maneuvered his jet like a
feather floating on air currents as it dipped into the 4,000-foot-deep
Diablo Canyon so that all could view the falls. This was the first time I
had ever flown in a jet and looked up at land! I held my breath as it banked
over moss green jungle, broken only by multi-colored rivers snaking their
way over table-top mesas, eventually falling in waterfalls to the valley
floor. White knuckling it or nor, I had to agree that this was some of the
best flying anywhere.
Named for James Angel, an American adventurer who crash-landed his plane
on the flat-topped plateau called Auyan-Tepui, which means "Devils
Mountain," Angel Falls plunges down 3,212 feet--15 times the height of
Niagara Falls--then springs up again into the rain-laden air to paint the
most brilliant double rainbow I had ever. Unknown until the 1930s and
difficult to access because of the density of the surrounding jungle, it's
best seen from the air.
I awoke
at 4:30 a.m. from a dream about a lost island filled with exotic plants and
animals. Maybe it was because I was preparing for an excursion to Angel
Falls, deep in the Guyana Highlands of southeastern Venezuela. After all, it
inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World, a novel
about a South American mountain peak populated by dinosaurs.