On the Guiana plateau in South America, on a small river Churun, is the highest waterfall in the world. It is surrounded by the realm of high mountains, turbulent rivers flowing through deep gorges, and dense impenetrable forests - a wild and little developed by man corner of the globe.
The waterfall has a height of 1054 meters, other sources claim that it is slightly less - 979 meters. The highest waterfall has several names. The most famous is Angel, which means "angel", and it is named after the discoverer - Juan Angel. The Indians call it Churun-Meru or Apemey, which translates as "maiden's eyebrow".
Europeans Angel opened relatively recently. The fact is that this miracle of nature - a kilometer-long vertical stream of water - is located in the most remote and inaccessible corner of our planet. The Churun River flows along the Auyan-Tepui (Devil's Mountain) plateau. Composed of porous sandstones, this mountain range rises 2600 meters above the selva. The water of the river, abruptly breaking down from a steep rocky wall into a dense tropical forest, forms the highest waterfall on Earth.
Waterfall Discoverer - Adventurer
The official opening took place at the beginning of the last century. At this time, there is an outbreak of the diamond rush in Venezuela. Numerous adventurers rushed into the impenetrable selva. Juan Angel was one of them. On a small sports plane, in 1935 he flew to Auyan Tepui, hoping to find diamonds there.
Angel failed to discover diamond deposits, but he saw the highest waterfall and informed the whole world about its existence. His plane crashed and had to make an emergency landing in the very area that Conan Doyle described in his famous novel The Lost World. Angel miraculously managed to get out of the impenetrable jungle, and, having reached the first settlement, he immediately announced the discovery. Since then, his name has been written on all maps of the world, in the very place where the highest waterfall on our planet is located.
The Lost World became available to everyone
Only fourteen years after the famous flight of Angel, in 1949, a group of American and Venezuelan surveyors with great difficulty managed to get to the falls. With the help of machetes and axes, they had to cut their way through the wild selva, completely intertwined with lianas. The last 36 km of the journey took 19 days. Their efforts fully paid off when they saw firsthand all the unforgettable beauty of a water column falling from a great height into a large lake at the foot of the plateau.
The area around Devil's Mountain is soimpassable, that for a very long time only the most courageous explorers could break through to it. Nowadays, everyone can see the highest waterfall. Local authorities managed to organize tourist routes to it. You can fly to Angel by a small light helicopter or sail along the river in a canoe with a motor. Fans of extreme sensations have the opportunity to fly on a hang glider, jumping from the edge of the plateau, and enjoy all the splendor of falling water from a bird's eye view.
