Venezuela is an amazing state! After all, it was here that the world famous Hugo Chavez lived and ruled, and there are incredibly low gas prices. The proof of this is the opportunity to refuel a tank of a Jeep car for just one hundred rubles. But that is not all. Only in Venezuela there is a huge amount of tepui - these are mountains with truncated peaks, and therefore their appearance is rather unusual and strange. People call them table mountains. This name is probably due to the fact that objects are flat, like tables. Now draw a picture for yourself: in the impenetrable jungle here and there, rocks are piled up to one kilometer in height. Their peaks are flat, they have sheer vertical walls. Therefore, even after light rainfall, water accumulates there, and then flows down into numerous waterfalls. And one of them is the highest Angel Falls.
Angel Falls in numbers
This is the highest freefalling waterfall on Earth. Its view is truly amazing! Powerful jets of water crash down and drown in clubs of water dust and fog. The height of the Angel Falls reaches 978 meters. Although some sources call a slightly larger figure - 1059 meters. And the fall height of Angel Falls is 807 meters. The tallest building on the planet is considered a computer network tower. So, our waterfall is almost twice as high as this creation of human hands. And three times higher than the Eiffel Tower. They say that Niagara Falls boasts of its own parameters. But we will disappoint those who are sure of this. After all, Angel is 20 times taller than his “brother”! In 1949, an expedition of the National Geographic Society determined the official height of the main attraction of Venezuela.
The coordinates of Angel - a waterfall that has no equal in the whole world - can be indicated by the following numbers: latitude - 5 ° 58'03 "N, or 5.9675, and longitude - 62 ° 32'08" W. d., or 62.535556. And every second, Angel passes through himself three hundred cubic meters of water that the Churun River delivers.
The history of the discovery of the waterfall
Angel Falls was opened relatively recently. A hundred years have not passed since that time. Everything happened quite by accident, and this story is pretty interesting. In the 1930s, a hotbed of “diamond rush” broke out in Venezuela. Hundreds of fans of easy money and those who simply had nothing to do rushed into impassable and dense wilds. Pilot from America James Angel purchased a small sports- type aircraft and headed for the Auyan-Tepui massif - this is just not far from the place where Angel Falls was hidden from the public eye for many centuries ...
More valuable than diamonds
The peaks of the table mountains in that area are often covered by clouds. But Angel was lucky: he flew in clear weather. And he was the first to be lucky to see a kilometer-long water vertical. Angel did not manage to find diamonds, but he brought world fame to the waterfall. The plane of the gold digger crashed, and only a miracle saved the pilot. James landed in the very place that the famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle chose to describe the events in the novel "The Lost World".
Angel got 11 days to civilization. And so, when he managed to find the first post office he came across, he informed the American National Geographic Society about where Angel Falls was. He described his discovery, and the find was named after him. "But why angel?" - the reader will ask. And all because Angel in Spanish reads like Angel.
A bit about the surrounding area
Tourists, probably, would like to learn more about where Angel Falls is located. And it is located, as already mentioned above, in Venezuela, in the highlands, which is called Guyana. It is on the Carrao River, which is one of the tributaries of Orinoco. From the same Spanish language, Angel is translated as "angel".
Since ancient times, the name Churun-Meru has been assigned to the attraction. So he was called the Indian tribes living in this area. The plateau from which the waterfall falls is called Auyan-Tepui, which means "Devil’s Mountain." This name was given because the plateau is constantly shrouded in dense fog. Where Angel Falls is located, tropical forests grow everywhere, so there are no special roads to it. Thus, you can get here either by air or by water.
National park and journey to it
Angel is part of the Venezuelan Canaima National Park. To this miracle of nature, hundreds of excursions are organized annually. But since the place is quite inaccessible, people prefer air walks. If you decide to get to Angel by river, you can do this as follows: first you have to swim by motor canoe to the village of Canaima, and then walk about two to three kilometers. A dirt road leads to Canaima , and local authorities have arranged a small airport in the neighborhood, which provides services to guests and tourists. Travelers can use the shops, bars and comfortable hotels. The waterfall, together with the territories adjacent to it, managed to preserve the charm of the wild. If you are lucky, then during the walk you can see the local animals that went to the watering hole. Jaguars, three-fingered sloths, anteaters, giant otters and other interesting representatives of the fauna live in the park jungle.
The height of Angel Falls provides an opportunity to admire the observation deck and the nearby picturesque lagoon, which has the same name as the park. Powerful streams of water are thrown here from around the ledges.
Who and why renamed the waterfall
In 2009, the then president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, said that Angel Falls should be renamed Kerepakupai-Meru. True, the option of Churun-Meru was first considered. But one of the daughters of the ruler remembered that a waterfall with the same name already exists in this area. In addition, it is quite small. Then Hugo Chavez decided to opt for Kerepakupai-Meru. The leader motivated his action with the fact that the attraction should not be named after an American, since long before the opening the waterfall was in Venezuela and belonged only to it.
Interesting about the waterfall
Where Angel Falls is located, many different plants grow. The third part of them is not found anywhere else on the planet. The waterfall itself is fed by the waters of the rains, so when the dry season begins, it turns into a thin stream. When precipitation falls again, the attraction takes the form of a powerful, immense and so beautiful giant.
A few things that few people know about.
It is believed that the first person from Europe to see Angel was Ernest Sanchez La Cruz. The attraction was opened to his gaze in 1910. There is also evidence that even earlier this giant was noticed by the Spanish conquistadors and Catholic missionary monks. Nevertheless, James Angel brought fame to the miracle of nature. Later, the coordinates of Angel (waterfall) were established and its height was determined.
The broken plane of James Angel lay on the top of the mountain for 33 years. In 1970, the remains of the car were removed from tepui. It was restored, and today the plane stands at the entrance to the city airport of Ciudad Bolivar. After the death of James (1960), his ashes were scattered over the highest waterfall on Earth, which was named after the pilot. That was Angel’s last wish.
The waterfall is a bewitching sight, let the traveler make sure of this himself, seeing with his own eyes this miracle of nature.