International Travel Adventure

Adventure to one might be madness to another, or just “sight-seeing” to yet another, but we’ll have fun with all adventure here - not just to show impartiality, but to taste life! So, this is one of those times when I’ll just throw out an idea of where to go, and what to see or do when you get there. I will borrow a bit from a book I have here - “1,000 Places To See Before You Die” by Patricia Schultz. It’s a great resource for travel ideas.

The highest waterfall on earth is where? Did you guess Australia? Africa? Wrong on both counts! It is, of course, in South America - Puerto Ordaz, Gran Sabana, Venezuela, to be more precise. Angel Falls is named for its “discovery” (1933) by American bush pilot Jimmy Angel, even though it was discovered years earlier (1910) by the first non-indigenous Venezuelan explorer Ernesto Sanchez La Cruz, who didn’t publicize his discovery (Wikipedia). So, check it out: 3,212 feet total, with an uninterrupted fall of 2,648 feet. That is 15 times the height of Niagara Falls, and one-and-a-half times that of the Empire State Building!

Jungles and savanna surround the area, which has more than one hundred of the massive sandstone rock formations that create a series of elevated mesas - some reaching over 9,000 feet in height! Angel Falls plummets off of one of these flat-topped tepuys (”mountain” in the local Pemón Indian language) - Aiyan-tepui (Devil’s Mountain), located in La Gran Sabana. These days, it is all part of Venezuela’s Canaima National Park. It is the same area that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when he wrote his classic  “The Lost World”, which, like “Jurassic Park”, was populated with dinosaurs.

If you manage to get to this fabulous place, there are fly-over tours, as well as trips to the base of the falls by foot, jeep, or even motorized dugout canoe. These originate from the rustically comfortable lodge of thatched-palm cabanas on the lagoon side of the park. The wind generated from the falling water creates a sprayed mist that would envelope you long before you got close to the falls; keeping cool wouldn’t be a problem - keeping dry is another matter! But January through May is the drier season, the best time for hiking to the base. Is anyone up for jungle trekking? How about finding a way to the top of a few of those sandstone mesas? The views from the higher ones would be akin to flying over the lower ones; could you imagine sitting on the edge of one of them?

If you’re still unsure of anything about your next international travel - and you want it to be cheaper, safer, and more adventurous, get my free “Smart Tips Handbook” available exclusively to Registered Readers! Click the link below.

International Travel Adventure

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Travel Ideas, Travel Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.