Once impenetrable to all but the Pemon indigenous people, several thousand hikers a year now make the three-day trek across the savannah, through rivers, under a waterfall and along a narrow path scaling the cliffs of Mount Roraima.
The mysterious table-topped mountain on the Venezuela-Brazil border that perplexed 19th-century explorers is attracting ever more modern-day adventurers
Standing at more than 9,200 feet high, Roraima is sacred ground for the Pemons and a spiritual symbol for many other Venezuelans
Helicopters bring wealthy foreign tourists, especially from Japan, to the summit.
'It's an exotic, faraway destination so it's both very costly and very attractive,' said retired Japanese diplomat Edo Muneo, 68, who like other compatriots, had to pass a physical test before leaving Japan for Roraima.
In Pemon language, the flat-topped mountains across southeastern Venezuela are known as 'tepuis,' which means 'houses of the gods.' Standing majestically next to Roraima is Kukenan, another tepui, infamous among the Pemons for ancestors who jumped off and committed suicide there.
Out of season, both mountains have the peaceful aura appropriate to one of the Earth's most ancient formations.
Today's travellers can see black frogs, dragonflies and tarantulas that are unique to Roraima, plus a range of endemic plants clinging to cracks and crevasses. Not surprisingly, it is also an ornithologist's paradise.
