hola amigos!!
i just got back a couple of days ago from an amazing 7 day backpacking trip up to the top of a tepui!! tepuis are flat topped mountains, and venezuela has an abundance of them. these were the inspiration for the book The Lost World. Roraima is the largest (over 15km long) and highest (3000m) and also the most popular tepui to climb.
i hooked up with a really fun group of americans and our two wacky venezuelan guides (constantly singing spanish love songs and catching snakes for us to pet, for example!). i think the pictures will probably speak for themselves for how amazingly beautiful it was there!
we started off with a 20 km hike through savanna to get to a ramp that was about the width of a street which took us to the top of the tepui. there was lots of rain at first and we had a few involuntary showers on the way up from freshly formed waterfalls (one of which you can see in this picture! note also my lovely new indiana jones hat!)
i was pleased to discover another piece of evidence that venezuela is the land of the princess bride! wesley would have been pretty stoked by these cliffs of insanity!! INCONCEIVABLE!! speaking of which, there are some freeclimbing routes on roraima... hmmm epic tepui climbing adventure, anyone?
the surface of the tepui was pretty much what i imagine the moon would look like! i was half expecting to see a dinosaur peeking out behind every rock! lots of the black rocks on top looked like things; a turtle, sombrero, car, person, to name a few. the first day we spent on top we were in the clouds, which was pretty cool... wet, but it definately added to the mysterious air of the place!
the ´jacuzzis´were really cool (that´s all of us braving the freezing waters!) the rock underwater in the pools looked like gold, i was reminded of that one mysterious island from the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with the pool full of gold, but once you put your hand in it also turns to gold. pretty cool! there were a few areas up top with tons of crystals too... pretty riduculous! there were so many we were walking on them.
our other 2 days on top it was beautiful and clear and we were rewarded with an amazing view of Roraima, it´s sister tepui Kukenan (which is considered evil by the local pemon indians) and also of the lush green savanna stretching off in the distance. Kukenan has a waterfall pouring over it´s lip which is the second highest in the world!! the two tepuis together form sort of a cloud factory, and you can watch as the clouds are formed and creep up the sides of the mountain. here i am looking pretty epic like i just created the world or something!!
so i´m now onto the next leg of my journey; i´m finished with the volunteer work and currently i´m in cuidad bolivar, planning my trip to angel falls... hoping to be somewhere hot and beachy by christmas. hope you enjoy the pictures! and happy holidays to everyone :)
kate
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!
