Our Angel Falls adventure – the trip to the falls

How to describe any of this trip is hard – it’s so far away from the average Thursday or Friday. We charged from the airport to our boat – a long punt-style set-up with a motor at the back and a boy with a paddle at the front. We met our guide, Raúl, who was fairly ridiculous – swaggered about but still seemed to be in an eternal rush. There were 6 of us on our tour, a German bloke, 2 Italians and a Dutch character. We were joined by two sour-faced German ladies and their German tour guide who was even more ridiculous than ours. Bizarrely, they managed to remain thoroughly miserable for 2 days. Anyway, on with the trip. We were seated in twos on benches down the boat and set off along a wide river – about 4 times the width of the Thames. With a couple of stops, it took us about 4 hours to reach the foot of Angel Falls. The scenery was spectacular all the way, flat-top tepuy mountains, jungle on both sides of the river, bright yellow and blue butterflies and lots of little rapids. After a while, we headed up a smaller river and things got more interesting – we had plenty of soakings as we made our way up rapids. Apparently the river level varies a lot from day to day. A tour that left the day after us had to get out and push their boat a lot but we got through alright.

We arrived at our camp for the night - a covered area with hammocks on the edge of the river and the jungle opposite Angel Falls - with sore bottoms but feeling pretty exhilarated. We went for a swim in the river staring up at Angel Falls – it’s difficult to get the scale of it really, about 980 metres. ‘Spectacular’ really is the word for the whole thing. We ate delicious chicken roasted on an open fire for tea, chatted with our group and fell asleep in hammocks under a starry, full moon sky.

The next morning, we were up at 4.45 and marched at a pace that nearly defeated our Dutch and Italian friends up through the jungle to the base of the falls. The clouds cleared and it was pretty amazing. We went further up to a pool and went for one of the most refreshing swims I’ve ever had. It was boiling and humid up there.

Getting back down river was quicker than up. Once back in Canaima, we walked under rocky overhangs of massive waterfalls – spewing the water from 4 big rivers joining into the Canaima lagoon. We spent most of the last few days wet – drenched in the boat, swimming, under the waterfalls and more swimming. It’s been lovely.

We got back last night to Ciudad Bolivar, spent the night here and got thoroughly drenched in a dramatic downpour – we sheltered under a fruit stall in a street market but when the water was turning into a river down the street (up to our knees in places) we decided to make a run for the posada. It’s quite incredible when it rains like that – a bit like a river’s being dumped on your head for an hour. Now we’re about to head off on a night bus to Mérida in the west of Venezuela.