Angel Falls or Salto Ángel is the world's highest free-falling waterfall at 3,212 feet with an uninterrupted drop of 2,648 feet lying in the Canaima National Park, Venezuela. It is situated on the Churún River, an affluent of the Carrao. Curún in indigenous Pemón language means "thunder."
Angel Falls is located in the Guayana highlands, one of the five topographical regions of Venezuela. It plunges off the edge of a tepui, or table-top mountain, called Auyan Tepui (“Devils Mountain”). It is 500 feet wide at its base and in total is 15 times higher than America's Niagara Falls.
Angel Falls is one of Venezuela's top tourist attractions, despite its remoteness and the absence of roads leading to nearby villages. One of the world's great natural wonders, Angel Falls inspires feelings of awe in the hearts of those who make the journey.
Discovery and history
James Angel's monoplane.
Although sighted in the early twentieth century by the explorer Ernesto Sanchez La Cruz, the waterfall was not known to the Western world until it was visited in 1935 by the American aviator, James Crawford Angel, on a flight while searching for a valuable ore bed. In 1936, he returned and landed his plane at the top of the waterfall. The falls are currently named "Angel Falls" after him; interestingly, the indigenous name for the falls means "Devil's Mouth."
Angel's monoplane settled down into the marshy ground atop Auyan Tepui and remained there for 33 years before being lifted out by a helicopter. Jimmy Angel and his three companions managed to descend the mountain and make their way back to civilization in 11 days. Angel's plane currently sits in the Aviation Museum in Maracay, Venezuela. A similar plane visible at the top of the falls is a replica.
The official height of the falls was determined by a National Geographic Society survey in 1949. Canaima National Park, in which the Falls are located, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.
Environment
Flora and fauna
Angel Falls seen from Raton.
Angel Falls is situated in the Gran Sabana region of Venezuela. The periphery of this area is filled with grasslands, whereas deeper into the Gran Sabana one finds dense jungle. This part of the world is remarkable for its numerous tepuis, flat-topped mountains with vertical walls. Angel Falls is located on the side of an extremely large and high tepui known as Auyan Tepui.
Tourists sometimes refer to the stretch of the Churún River where the falls are located as the Auyan Tepui River, but the river that culminates in the drop is the Kerepakupai-merú. In the indigenous Pemón language Kerepakupai-merú means "waterfall of the deepest place."
There is an incredible variety of tropical wildlife in the area, including monkeys, poison arrow frogs, and hundreds of species of orchids. Aside from the monkeys, mammals in the area are generally difficult to spot but include giant anteaters, armadillos, porcupines, three-toed sloths, otters, jaguars, pumas, tapirs, and capybaras.
Geology
One of the several impressive tepuis, or table-top mountains, in Canaima National Park.
Lying within the Canaima National Park, Angel Falls is part of the plateau that underlies the lands located in Venezuela to the south of the Orinoco River. The plateau's age is estimated at two billion years. Important geological transformations can be seen at the park, from its beginnings in the Precambrian period dating back to the time of the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea.
This continent began to separate due to the formation of a fracture in the planet's crust resulting in the formation of the Atlantic Ocean, and the creation of different portions of lands called shields. The geographic region in Venezuela, known as the Guyanese Shield, existed from the start as a great plain at an elevation roughly as high as today's visible tepuis, about 6500 to 9800 feet. After the formation of the great plain, during a long period of time—approximately 400 to 200 million years ago—a series of climate-related phenomena caused important changes in the geography of the Guyanese Shield.