Angel Falls: World’s Tallest Waterfall
Angel Falls or Salto Ángel is found in the Canaima National Park in Venezuela. Funny enough the local name for the mountain from which the waterfall flows is Auyan Tepui or Devil’s Mountain and the top of the waterfalls themselves was called the Devil’s Mouth. An ironic twist that the current name for Angel Falls is such an extreme opposite.
This is a plunge waterfall, as the river flows over the cliff face it loses contact with the rock and plunges freely for a distance. It is 3,212 feet tall and makes an impressive sight as the water falls from the top of the tan and brown rocky face. (This is much higher than your average garden waterfall!)Of this 3,000 plus feet, 2,648 feet are an uninterrupted drop, meaning that the doesn't make contact with rocks or boulders in a cascading fashion, thus its identification as a plunge waterfall. This waterfall is so high that on some cloudy days visitors are unable to see the top of it and it seems as if the falls come straight out of the heavens, which is what makes the name so suiting.
However, Angel Falls did not get its name for this reason. The waterfall has only been known to the world at large for a little less than a hundred years. In 1933 they were ‘officially’ discovered by an aviator named James Crawford Angel, for whom the waterfall is named.
As the story goes he first sighted the waterfall in 1933 during a gold prospecting flight. He went back to search for the waterfall and prove its existence in 1937. Angel did indeed manage to find the waterfall, unfortunately he made the mistake of landing on the ground of the ‘tepui’ surrounding the waterfall. The tepui refers to a mountain with a plateau or wide level top. This one was marshy land and the plane sank into the ground unable to break free for flight.
James Angel had with him, his wife and a Venezuelan named Gustavo Heny. Lucky for Angel, Gustavo was familiar with the area they landed in and knew it well enough to guide the tiny group off the mountain and to the Mission of Kamarata in 11 days. They arrived hungry, tired and bursting with the news of the world’s tallest waterfall. In 1970 James Angel’s plane was discovered where it had been left on the top of a mountain and was freed using helicopters. It has now been restored and sits in the Aviation Museum in Maracay. There is however a replica of the plane sitting on the mountain for tourists to view. This is quite an amazing story to go with an amazing waterfall.
In order to visit the falls adventuring tourists must begin their travels from one of the small villages surrounding the falls. Of these the ones most used for expeditions to the falls or Canaima, Kavak and Kamarata. Even with these villages being the closest to the falls and the National Park it is still a few days trek to Angel Falls.