First Day of Angel Falls

On the morning of Saturday, December 2, our intrepid group set off from Ciudad Bolivar Airport aboard a series of tiny Cessnas, to cross over the forest of Canaima National Park to reach the village of Canaima. This was the first step of the 3-day tour of Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world (clocking in at 979 meters – over 3,000 feet, and 15 times higher than Niagara).



Hopefully this captures just how tiny those Cessnas are…

View out the window en route to Canaima, which is only reachable by plane.

Once we were all in Canaima, we gathered at Campamento Tiuna. There were 11 of us in the group, with a pretty decent mix of nationalities: there were 3 Germans (Sebastian, Sarah and Claudia), 2 Italians (Ricardo and Sarah), 2 Brits (Lucinda and David), 1 Austrian (Richard), 1 Irish guy (Martin) and 1 Japanese fellow (he didn’t really speak any English and mostly kept to himself, so I didn’t catch his name), and me. (I still have yet to encounter a single other American on this trip, by the way!)

This is me in front of Canaima Lagoon

We then took off via wooden boat to cruise around Canaima Lagoon before heading up Rio Churun towards Angel Falls.

Canaima Lagoon

Here we are approaching Ucaima Falls. We then docked the boat and literally hiked up behind these falls – totally wild, huh?

Final approach of Ucaima Falls (on foot). When I made some comment about the force of the waterfalls serving as a nice vaporizing facial, one of the Brits mistook me for a metrosexual. When I protested vigorously, she mistakenly assumed I was trying to assert my machismo. I couldn’t hear what she said next, as she was drowned out by the pounding surf of the falls as I methodically re-applied my Shiseido Moisturizing Suncream one more time…

Walking behind Ucaima Falls