Last night while laying awake in the Hammock while trying to sleep during the biggest and best tropical storm you can imagine a lot of different names for this Blog post went through my head with some of the others being “ The Thunders Rolled up and down the Valleys”, “70 K’s up the River in a Tree” and “OMG what a Trip”. We will return to that later.
Well let’s start 2 days ago when we left Caracas and travelled to Ciudad Bolivor to start the trip to Angel Falls getting collected at the airport and driven the 100 k’s to the Posada for the night. This was along the best Dual carriageway in all of South America, it was built years ago for the traffic shifting and suppling the Steel and Aluminium smelters that were built to operate on the vast amounts of Hydropower that was available. This is all came crashing down around the Government because in about 2008 it decided to Nationalise all of these factories from around 50% ownership to total control by kicking out the joint venture partners, but didn’t realise that all the brain and management went with the partners and no one will come back due to the poor conditions and not enough salary. Due to the drop in traffic it’s still like the day it was built.
Early yesterday we boarded a 210 Cesena for the 65-minute flight to Canaima the base town for the trip to Angel falls.
Upon landing the weather was looking fairly clear so James and I elected to do the over flight option start away. This was a fantastic flight as it took us up along the river we would travel the next day. And up amongst the plateaus that have waterfalls coming of them everywhere.
Our view of Angle falls was less then ideal due to a bank of cloud against the cliff line that only revealed the lower 1000 feet and the top of the plateau. But all in all the flight was fantastic and as we looked down at the river we would journey up the next day we wondered how we would get up all the rapids we could see in a boat the next day.
The rest of that day was touring the falls into the lagoon at Canaima, which included being able to walk behind 2 of them along wide ledges and watch the power of these falls from a new angle.
This walk included some encounters with some very pretty grasshoppers and frogs.
The next morning we headed up the River for the angle falls visit. The trip is done in a real dugout tree about 40 ft long with a 48 horsepower outboard. The first set of rapids were a bit shallow so we all get out and walked the 500 metres up stream while the boat goes up with only the Skipper. Then its back in the boat to sit very balanced and still on hard wooden seat for the 4-hour journey. Luckily I had my Thermarest cushion that saved a lot of Numb-bum problems for me.
During the rest of the trip we literally drove the boat up numerous rapid up to about 3/4 metre high with the skipper knowing the deep parts that the boat fits through. We were told if the river was a bit lower we would need to get out and push the boat up some. At one time the river was full of house size blocks of sand stone that the boat was threaded trough with amazing skill.
We all agreed that the boat trip up through this remote tropical jungle amongst Sandstone plateaus towing 5000 feet above us was worth the entry fee even if we didn’t see the falls with out cloud. As we ventured further up the river it got more and more rainy with a view of the falls looking less likely.
At last we rounded a corner to see the falls falling out of the clouds. We disembark our tree and do the ¾ hour walk up to the viewing area with hope of the cloud clearing.
The Waterfall Gods were with because by the time we emerged from the tropical jungle hike to the rock ledge giving us the falls view all the clouds had lift to above the plateau to give a superb view of the falls with the rain from the day increasing the flow from when we flew past yesterday.
After swimming in a pool below the falls but not under the falls as it just drops on to rocks we retired to out overnight camp to spend the night before returning down the river in the morning.
The overnight camp was a shanty built in the jungle with a view of the falls. After being feed a great meal of chicken cooked over an open fire we retired for the night in Hammocks. I’m yet to be convinced that a hammock is a great place to sleep. Maybe I’m the wrong size to fit in to local hammock so after the first 2 hours sleep that was the end of it for night as I was woken up by the biggest thunder storm.
It was amazing to lie there and listen to the thunder roll up and down the valleys bouncing off all the 3000-foot high cliffs that form the valleys. One big flash would keep the thunder rolling back and forth for up to 10 seconds.
Laying there listening to the rain on the tin roof I knew that the river was going rise a bit and make the trip down river interesting. When we woke this morning to a river that had risen about 4 metres where we had camped.
The down river trip was very smooth with the river being so full you didn’t even know the rapids excited at all and the house size blocks where total submerged an we motored straight over the top where our skipper picked the gaps.
We still had to walk past the same rapid on the way down as yesterday. After returning to Canaima we boarded our plane for the trip back to Cuidad Bolivar ready for our trip to the Orinoco delta, which will be the next post.
