With a population of 20,000, Santa Elena de Uairén, capital of the Gran Sabana, is the Lost World’s big city. Indian villages Wonken (in the Gran Sabana’s heartland) and Kavanayen (near Aponwao) make for spectacular viewing of the tepuis and boast airports. Parai-Tepuy (not far from Mt. Roraima) and the postcard-worthy tourist camp of Kavac (within range of the waterfall and canyon of the same name) are other popular urban highlights. At the northern tip of La Escalera en route to the historical Venezuelan town of Ciudad Bolivar, the desolate mining town of Kilometro-88 (yes, that’s Kilometer-88) is reportedly handy for supplies for the Lost World, but little else.

Waterfalls abound here — some seasonal, some not. Angel Falls, the world’s highest, has a free fall of 2,640 feet. Aponwao, also known as Chinak-Merú, stands at more than 328 feet. You can swim through a four-foot-wide canyon to the base of the Kavac waterfalls. To the south of the Lost World, Jaspé Falls (La Quebrada de Jaspé), a series of small waterfalls along a wooded stream, run over a bed of red, yellow and orange jasper. Its name in Pemón, Kako Paru, means “fire creek.”

Once on site, your travel options are usually to walk, fly, or hop a dugout river canoe piloted by local Pemón Indians. When navigable, one of the Lost World’s many rivers is often the best bet for reaching your tepui of choice. The hard bit is making that choice.

Angel Falls, Venezuela’s top tourist attraction, is located on the pinnacle of Auyantepui (”Devil Mountain” in Pemón). At 8,530 feet tall and with an area of 270 square miles, it is the largest of the Lost World’s tepuis. At 9,000 feet, Mount Roraima ranks as the Lost World’s highest tepui — only 44 square miles of it have been explored. Next to Roraima looms Kukeyan, the perfect pick for panoramic views of the Sabana. Another 97 tepuis, some explored, some not, remain.

Prefer to trek in a car? Good luck. In the Gran Sabana, you can find:

23 paved roads

10 paved roads

3 paved roads

1 paved road

The Lost World’s Canaima National Park is only about a two-hour flight from Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, but trekking among the tepuis is not for those who like their vacations on the soft side. The Park asks visitors not to try and climb the tepuis without at least one guide and one porter. Though accessible to relatively fit visitors, Mount Roraima is described by tour companies as a “vigorous” climb. Auyantepui, home to Angel Falls, is sometimes termed as better left to experienced hikers. Whatever your mission, be prepared for adventurous living. En route to Mount Roraima — a three-day trek on average — you might stay in palm-thatched huts on the savanna (”churuatas”) and sleep in hammocks or tents on the slopes. Bathing facilities usually come in the form of rivers.

The foundation for the massive sandstone massifs was laid when South America and Africa made up the continent Godwanaland. Water and air are thought to have transported sand from nearby eroding mountain ranges to the area that would become the Guyana Highlands, home to the tepuis. When South America broke apart from Africa, about 180 million years ago, fissures and fractures formed in the highlands’ sandstone plateaus known as the Roraima Group. Forces within the earth lifted up some sections of the plateaus higher than others. Erosion over millions of years did the rest. Made of sandstone and quartz, the tepuis have been in their present form for the past 3 to 4 million years.

The towering tabletop mountains are found mostly in southeastern Venezuela, though some examples exist in northern Brazil and western Guyana. The largest and most imposing examples are located in Venezuela’s Canaima National Park.

The soil on top of the tepuis is acidic and poor in nutrients — a fact that makes some of the Lost World’s best-known plants carnivorous. On the top of some tepuis, dwarf forests can be seen; on others, meadows. Peat covers many of the summits. Jagged piles of quartz and sandstone jut out of the mountains’ surrounding savannas and jungles.

This is a humid environment and the area is crisscrossed with rivers and waterfalls (often seasonal), among which the 3,212-feet-tall Angel Falls — the world’s highest waterfall, located on the Churún River — serves as the star attraction. River beds of solid jasper in reds or oranges also provide an exotic touch — one of the most popular stops for tourists is at Jaspé Falls.

Temperatures generally range from 46° to 68° Fahrenheit. On the top of Mount Roraima, temperatures have dipped as low as 33.8° F, but no frost has been recorded. Rainfall is plentiful (79 to 157 inches per year) and humidity consistently high.

Angel Falls is more than three times the height of what famous monument?

The Empire State Building

The Eiffel Tower

The Great Pyramid of Giza

The Sears Tower

Want to go to Angel Falls? Prepare for an adventure. If you opt to depart from Canaima National Park on a dugout canoe with a Pemón guide, travel time can take up to three days during the dry season (roughly December to April) with plenty of canoe-carrying thrown in. During the wet season, canoe travel can be quite dangerous; some guides will outright refuse to go. If water doesn’t work, Avensa, Venezuela’s national carrier, also runs daily flights over the falls as part of a tour package to Canaima National Park. Failing that, there’s a less popular cross-country trek to the falls from Kavak or Uruyen tourist camps. Travel time? Between 6 to 10 days of hiking.

Living Edens: The Lost World – Venezuela’s Ancient Tepuis explores a remote corner of the world — a land that time forgot.

“The eighth wonder of the world.” “An exotic, other-worldly landscape.” “It’s unlike anywhere else on Earth.” To explore it is to “walk on the moon.” The ancient tepuis of Venezuela, with their gravity-defying rock formations, thundering falls, and singular flora and fauna, deserve every note of praise and wonder they receive. Hailed as the land that time forgot, this virtually unexplored corner of South America hides record-breaking and breathtaking landscapes and evolutionary marvels.

NATURE’s The Lost World will take you to the very heart of a world that precious few have visited. Still only marginally explored, it has inspired several books, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous The Lost World, and remains a source of awe and humility for all who visit it. This land of incredible beauty and abundance, of harrowing rides and deadly climbs, harbors a journey you will never forget — and a story millions of years in the making.

Online content for Living Edens: The Lost World – Venezuela’s Ancient Tepuis was originally posted September 2003.