Climb Mt Roraima, Venezuela

 

Here be dragons- at least, that's how it feels. For to ascend Venezuela's mightiest tabletop mountain, via a tangle of forest, an army of sandflies and punishingly slippery slopes, is to enter a prehistoric, and utterly unique, lost world.

Elevation: 2810 m
Location: Canaima National Park, Southeastern Venezuela 
Ideal Time Commitment: Five to Six Days
Best Time of Year: November to April

• Watching waterfalls tumble off the top of neighboring tepui Kukenan- which, in Pemon, means "Place of Death".
• Spending the night in Roraima "hotel", sandy areas sheltered by rock overhangs.
• Scouring the tepui top for curious indigenous species- tiny black toads and unusual blooms.
• Taking a dip in the jacuzzis- ice clear, icicle-cold pools on Roraima's summit.
• Waiting for the mist to clear, to give sweeping, international views of where Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil meet.
• Nursing wobbly legs, a sunburned nose and myriad jejane (sandfly) bites with a cold beer back in Paraitepui, after a climb well done.

"Inaccessible, accept by means of balloon." That was the verdict on Mt Roraima in 1872. By the latter half of the 19th century, several Western explorers had set their eyes on the highest of Venezuela's strange table-top shaped mountains, and all had determined it quite insurmountable- its foliage too dense, its situation too remote, its upper flanks too extraordinarily sheer.
Often the mesa is draped in a dramatic tablecloth wispy white (it rains virtually every day). But when the linen is whipped off, the vastness is revealed; from here, you can look out over three countries, and across to other tepuis, which all have their own secret summits.