The highest waterfall in the world: Angel Falls

Most beauty and highest waterfalls name Angel Falls. 

Angel Falls is The highest waterfall in the world, with a height of almost a thousand meters, is a place that takes your breath away.

Located in the Canaima National Park (in the Bolívar State, Venezuela), the Angel Falls falls from the top of the Auyantepuy and is framed in an imposing environment of more than 30,000 km2 of vegetation and fauna that was declared a World Heritage Site by the Unesco in 1994.

Angel Falls

Canaima National Park is full of rivers, tropical forests and more than a hundred tepuis, huge masses that come out of the earth as gigantic square mountains, erected imposingly in the middle of the plain and the jungle, of Precambrian origin, with almost geometric edges chiseled by erosion over millions of years.

There is not much unanimity about who discovered Angel Falls (Angel Falls, Angel Falls). Some Spanish researchers attribute their find to the Spanish explorer and governor Fernando de Berrío, who in the 17th century led some expeditions to El Dorado. Venezuelans are unaware of these arguments and attribute it to the explorer Ernesto Sánchez, who in 1910 reported the discovery to the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons in Caracas, but did not make it public. Some Venezuelan researchers consider that Félix Cardona Puig, the captain of the Venezuelan Navy born in Catalonia, was the one who encountered the jump for the first time, in 1927. The articles and maps of Cardona Puig attracted the interest of the American aviator James Angel, who knew the area and got in contact with Cardona Puig.

James “Jimmie” Crawford Angel was born on August 1, 1899, near Cedar Valley, Missouri. Before he was 15 years old, he was already working in aerial circuses, walking on the wings of airplanes, and parachuting. He was in the First World War, and in the Middle East, he made reconnaissance flights for Lawrence of Arabia. He fought in China, fought air pirates above the Gobi desert, made aerial adventure films; what is said a man with an adventurous spirit.

In 1921, the American geologist JR McCracken hired Angel to take him to an area of ​​Venezuela called Canaima. They landed on a huge tepui, on a sandbar near a stream, and in three days they collected 75 pounds of Cochano gold (natural, virgin gold). Jimmie Angel has been obsessed with going back to his "river of gold" ever since. The imposing waterfall that falls from the top of the Auyantepuy was not known to the world until Jimmie Angel flew over it on November 16, 1933, while searching for his valuable bed of gold; Angel did not locate the tepui where he had been years before and therefore neither the gold he was looking for. In 1935 he organized his third trip and then many other flights over the "Devil's Mountain" (that's what they called Auyantepuy), some of them with Cardona Puig,

Based on cartography from Cardona Puig, on October 9, 1937, Jimmie Angel landed on the top of Auyantepuy in the “Río Caroní” monoplane plane, a Flamingo manufactured in Spain with a capacity for 8 passengers. Along with Angel were his second wife, Mary, and the Venezuelans Gustavo “Cabuya” Henry and Miguel Delgado. None of them would have minded dying after seeing the impressive waterfall. "This is the mountain of gold," Jimmie Angel said after landing on top of the tepui. The landing was rough and almost turned into a tragedy; At noon the plane hovered over apparently solid ground, but the wheels were trapped in the mud, preventing it from taking off later. Before landing, Jimmie Angel was careful to disconnect the electricity to the device so that no fire would start in the event of a mishap. All the occupants of the plane were unharmed.

Finally, Jimmie Angel was on the plateau that ends in the great waterfall. It was in the Auyantepuy, "the Devil's Mountain", a mountain almost 2,500 meters high, east of the Caroní River and south of the Orinoco River, in one of the oldest areas of the planet, the prehistory of Venezuelan geography, one of the wettest places in the world.

There he corroborated the existence and exact location of the waterfall, and since then the waterfall was known internationally; the "Kerepakupai Merú" changed its name to "Angel Falls" ("Angel Falls", "Angel Falls"). Not many adventurers or explorers have dared to undertake the route up to the heights of the waterfall, as imposing as it is intimidating; That is why Angel's deed is admirable.

The Catalan Félix Cardona Puig, who had already seen the Auyantepuy flying with Angel in March of that same year, was the man who was in charge of communicating to the world that the famous aviator was lost at the top of Devil's Mountain. Cardona managed to hear with extreme weakness, on the radio transmitter in his house in Caracas, a few broken and unintelligible words emitted through the radio of Angel's plane, registration number NC-9487, which recounted the accident landing and the difficult situation.

Angel Falls

The passengers, stranded on top of the tepui, had to walk and descend through difficult terrain and food shortages to descend to the nearest settlement, in Kamara. It took them two weeks to descend the mountain and they saved their lives thanks to Gustavo Henry, an exceptional climber.

As word of Angel's adventure and its findings spread, international interest in the Venezuelan Gran Sabana region increased dramatically, leading to several scientific explorations in the following years. The members of the expedition took several photographs that proved the existence of the waterfall, confirmed in 1949 as the highest in the world by a National Geographic study led by journalist Ruth Robertson, who determined the height of the jump: 979 meters, of the which 807 meters are of uninterrupted fall, while the rest are small equally impressive waterfalls.

Jimmie Angel died in Panama on December 8, 1956, and on July 2, 1960, his wish was fulfilled that his ashes were scattered in the waterfall that bears his name: Angel Falls. His plane remained over the Auyantepuy until February 1970, when it was disassembled and rescued by Venezuelan military helicopters and was exhibited in the National Aviation Museum of Maracay. There it was restored and a replica of it was built. Finally, the plane was reassembled and in 1974 it was transferred to a park in Ciudad Bolívar.

The Angel Falls is a huge column of water that rises furiously from the top of the imposing rock wall of Auyantepuy; It is a torrent that falls with a deafening roar until it disappears in the middle of a dense mist of sprayed water before reaching the Churún River. Access to the top of the waterfall is impossible except for helicopters and expert vertical wall climbers, and demanding permits are required to ascend the rocky face of the tepui.

This huge waterfall has always been shrouded in a halo of magic. The jump was known by the Pemon Indians, natives of the region, who called it Kerepakupai Verá or Kerepakupai Merú, which means “jump from the deepest place”. The jump instilled fear because the Auyantepuy was for them the Devil's Mountain, which housed the "macaron" or evil spirits, and especially Tramán-Chita, the supreme being of evil.

The fury of this exuberant waterfall is due to the force of the water coming from the intense tropical rains that concentrate and discharge on the tepui itself. Until very close to the waterfall there is not a river itself, but streams that meander over the plain until they converge on the slope from where the waterfalls. In 1955, the Latvian Aleksandrs Laime climbed the Auyantepui and was the first explorer to reach that river where the innumerable streams and watercourses that feed the waterfall converge, on top of the tepui. He baptized the river as "Gauja" (after a river of the same name in Latvia), however, its indigenous name, Kerepakupai, is still the best known. Laime was also the first European to walk a path that leads from the Churún River, in the Canaima Valley, to the base of the falls.

The rain that gives life to the Angel Falls causes more mist and mist that makes it difficult to see; in the dry season (between December and March) the sky is usually clear, although the waterfall also falls with less flow. The force of the torrent, together with the steepness of the tepui walls, hinders the growth of vegetation on the tepui walls, as well as animal migrations. Due to this, endemic flora and fauna species have been found at the top of the tepui, such as certain carnivorous plants that only inhabit the tops of these enormous plateaus.

Access to the Angel Falls is quite an adventure, since access to the national park is only possible by plane, and the rain and fog can make the flight dangerous. In the valley below the tepui is Lake Canaima, surrounded by dense vegetation of tropical trees and palm trees. In the lake, there is a lot of currents, since the water enters and leaves through uneven waterfalls. The lake has beaches of very white sand that contrast with the reddish waters and foam, due to the effect of tannins and saponin from the vegetation.

From the valley you can get to the Angel Falls by plane, flying over the Devil's Canyon formed by the waters of the Churún River, until you reach the Angel Falls, or going up the river aboard a curia (a type of indigenous canoe) and culminate the journey with a one-hour walk in which the main companies are the aroma of the wet jungle and the roar of the waterfalls that fall from the tepuys, since, although the Angel Falls is the most famous waterfall, all along with the Auyantepuy shear spring magnificent waterfalls that fall into the void wrapped in clouds of steam.

It is impossible not to be moved by the magnificence of this place, it is impossible not to feel that you are facing a wonderful natural spectacle.