Guiana Highlands Flat-topped mountains disappearing into mist

MYSTERIOUS TABLETOP MOUNTAINS, shrouded with mist and lush with exotic greenery, give the Guiana Highlands the sense of a land time forgotten, tucked into a remote corner of Venezuela. The highlands stretch into the Guianas and sections of Brazil and seem a real-life Jurassic Park, in flora if not fauna. 

Mount Roraima, 8,986 feet (2,739 m) tall and the most impressive of the flat mountains (called tepuis in the native Pemon language), was the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, a dinosaur-era adventure novel. 

Eroded over millions of years, the sandstone tepuis, called mesas (tables) by the Spanish, are one of South America’s oldest mountain ranges, rising like giant anvil tops above the surrounding landscape of jungle and savanna. It was only in 1935 that sections of the highlands became known to the Western world when American pilot Jimmy Angel discovered the spectacular waterfall now bearing his name, Angel Falls. 

This is the highest waterfall in the world, with a 3,212-foot (979 m) cascade plummeting off of Auyán Tepuí, also called Devil Mountain. The torrent is 17 times the height of Niagara Falls. It is the highlight of Parque Nacional Canaima, one of the largest national parks in the world, the tiny village of Canaima its gateway.