The real Jurassic Park

In 1884, Sir Everard im Thurn and his expedition team discovered a forested ramp up to the plateau. Scaling the natural staircase, at the summit they found no pterodactyls or apemen. Instead, they discovered a rocky landscape covered with scrubby vegetation interspersed by small patches of sandy marshland — as well as many plants and animals unique to the plateau.

Mount Roraima

In fact, around 35 per cent of the species on Mt Roraima are endemic, such as the Roraima bush toad. And 70 per cent of those found on South America’s tepuis exists only on these plateaus. Other species are like living fossils, almost identical to plants and animals that are now extinct in the rest of the world. For millions of years, life has been existing completely independently on these mist-shrouded mountaintops, away from the prying eyes of civilisation.

Welcome to Mount Roraima: The 'Floating Island' Plateau

In the 2009 Pixar film Up, the two main characters head out from the big city on a quest to Paradise Falls, a plateau somewhere in South America that looks like it floats high above a forest.

While Paradise Falls is fictional, a similar mountain really does exist in South America called Mount Roraima that juts straight out of Earth on the borders of Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana. Nicknamed the Floating Islandl, it’s so unique, scientists are still trying to understand its ecosystem.

Besides their other-worldly appearance, tepuis like Mount Roraima form differently from traditional mountains - most of which are the result of two continental plates simply smashing together.

Instead, researchers think tepuis started forming when sand settled and became rock at the bottom of the ancient oceans, some 2 billion years ago. To put that into perspective, Mount Everest only formed about 60 million years ago, and Earth itself is roughly 4.5 billion years old. So yeah, these things are ancient.

After this sandstone formed, the oceans receded and erosion took over, chiselling down the areas around the tepuis and creating a giant shelf made of super-ancient rock that looks completely out of place, given its surroundings.

While their age is mind-boggling in itself, one of the most tantalising things about Mount Roraima and other tepuis is that researchers are just now starting to understand the lifeforms that live on top of and inside them.

This mystery revolves around the fact that we know many creatures call the tops of these unique geological formations home, but how the heck did they get there?

One of the most talked-about studies on the issue was a 2012 paper that analysed the DNA of four different tree frog species from separate tepuis in South America.

The goal was to see if the frogs, which generally stick to one area for their entire lives, had common ancestors that dated back over 70 million years - when researchers think the tops of the tepuis became inaccessible by traditional means.

If the species had a common ancestor from more than 70 million years ago, it stands to reason that the frogs lived and evolved on the top of their individual tepuis. If not, the frogs likely travelled up to the tepui somehow.

The team found that all of the frogs had a common ancestor that lived about 5.3 million years ago, suggesting that there was a way for creatures to migrate to and from the mountain tops on their own.


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Journey to the real Lost World: Eerie flat-topped mountain that can only be reached by three-day trek and inspired Conan Doyle's iconic novel

A mystic, flat-topped mountain on the Venezuela-Brazil border that perplexed 19th-century explorers and inspired 'The Lost World' novel is attracting ever more modern-day adventurers.

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.

A 3,200ft waterfall and nerve-shredding cliffs: Daredevils reveal the world's most jaw-dropping climbing spots

If you've got a fear of heights, then look away now. Two daredevil climbers have revealed some of the world's most extreme climbing spots, from craggy coastlines in France to daunting 3,211 foot-high waterfalls in Venezuela.

The North Face ambassadors James Pearson, who grew up in England's Peak District, and Caroline Ciavaldini, from La Reunion island, both aged 32, have been tackling rock faces all over the world for more than a decade.

In their new tome, Climbing Beyond: The World's Greatest Rock-Climbing Adventures, the married duo gives detailed descriptions around their favorite spots to scramble up. 

What Caroline and James say: 'For the foreseeable future, climbing the Salto Angel will remain a great adventure.

'People will still have the chance to experience a climb where time seems to stop, a unique endeavor that you wish lasted more than two weeks.

'To wake up in your portaledge, cut off from the world, facing the Amazonian jungle and enjoying the rainbows, the sea of cloud at sunrise and the thousands of flickers of light that are all gifts from the waterfall is a unique experience.'

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Salto Angel - Angel Falls

Angel Falls is the world's highest waterfalls and Venezuela’s number-one tourist attraction. Its total height is 979m, with an uninterrupted drop of 807m – about 16 times the height of Niagara Falls. The cascade pours off the towering Auyantepui, one of the largest of the tepuis. Salto Ángel is not named, as one might expect, for a divine creature, but for an American bush pilot Jimmy Angel, who landed his four-seater airplane atop Auyantepui in 1937 while in search of gold. In the local Pémon language, the falls are called Parakupá Vená, or 'waterfall of the highest place'.

The waterfall is in a distant, lush wilderness with no road access. The village of Canaima, about 50km northwest, is the major gateway to the falls. Canaima doesn’t have an overland link to the rest of the country either but is accessed by numerous small planes from Ciudad Bolívar and Puerto Ordaz.

A visit to Salto Ángel is normally undertaken in two stages, with Canaima as the stepping-stone. Most tourists fly into Canaima, from where they take a boat to the falls. Most visitors who visit by boat opt to stay overnight in hammocks at one of the camps near the base of the falls. The trip upriver, the surrounding area and the experience of staying at the camp are as memorable as the waterfall itself. An alternative is to take a six-seat Cessna flight over Auyantepui and the falls, which can be done in around 45 minutes from Canaima airport for around US$60 to US$80 per person. If you have time, do both, as the experiences are both unforgettably spectacular and offer very different perspectives on this most extraordinary chunk of nature.

Salto Ángel, Auyantepui, Canaima and the surrounding area lie within the boundaries of the 30,000-sq-km Parque Nacional Canaima. All visitors need to pay a US$1.50 national-park entrance fee at Canaima airport.

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