Out of the Wild: Venezuela - surviving Roraima

Could you survive on Venezuela's remote Mount Roraima if you were flown to the top of the mountain by helicopter with a group of strangers and a few supplies?

That was the challenge set on US reality show "Out of the Wild", produced by the Discovery Channel.

Basically, nine ordinary US citizens were taken to the border between Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana and helicoptered to the top of Roraima with the aim of getting off the famous table-top mountain, known as a tepui in the language of the local Pemon tribe, and making their way back to civilization.

The show is not like "Survivor" or "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here", nobody was voted off by the public, but anybody could leave at any time if the challenge got too tough for them by activating a button on their GPS devices.

The lack of food, damp conditions and gruelling 70-mile hike down the mountain, across the savannah and through dense jungle put even the toughest participants to the test.

US Army Captain Nick Albini, a combat veteran, lost almost 30 pounds during the nearly three weeks it took to complete the trial.

He said afterwards, that it was a much tougher adventure than he had ever dreamed:

"I ate bugs for eight days straight without eating any meat - insects, worms, grasshoppers, spiders, grubworms, scorpions..."

Veteran travel journalist Ryan Van Duzer was also put to the test, calling his time in Venezuela "the most difficult mental and physical challenge of my life," although he said he enjoyed "stretching my limits... to the max."

Could you do it?

Part 2


Part 3


Killer wasps


Juicy Guava

Pixar's "Up" takes video gamers to Venezuela

As cinemas across the USA prepare to show Pixar-Disney's new 3D adventure movie UP - set in and around Angel Falls and the majestic tepui mountains of Venezuela's Canaima National Park - gamers can look forward to "Up: The Video Game" by THQ, which takes grumpy septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen and his young sidekick Russell on a series of further misadventures through the "undiscovered jungles of South America".


All the characters from the movie appear, including Dug the speaking dog and the villainous Muntz, who has spent years trying to track down a living specimen of the prehistoric bird that Russell finds and nicknames "Kevin".


The aim of the game is for Carl, Russell and Dug to work together to navigate treacherous jungles and rugged tepui mountains, battle exotic beasts like anacondas and crocodiles and stop Muntz from getting his hands on Kevin.

The game is released in a range of formats, including Wii, Xbox, Nintendo DS, Playstation 3 and Windows Vista/XP.

Watching the clip, it looks almost as exciting as climbing tepuis like Roraima and Auyantepui for real, but without the downsides like itchy mosquito bites, drenching tropical downpours, getting lost in dense mist and spending shivering nights in a leaky tent.



To buy "UP: The Video Game" click here:

Pixar movie "Up" explores Venezuela's Lost World

"There's adventure out there!"

Venezuela makes it onto the big screen this May as Pixar's latest animated characters explore the mysterious tepui mountains of the Gran Sabana in the comedy movie "Up".

The movie is billed as "a 3-D tale about a grumpy old man who ties balloons to his house and floats away with it to the South American jungle."

Some insider sources have suggested that "Up" is a loose adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes classic novel "Don Quixote", but it's more like the Wizard of Oz.

The story revolves around a curmudgeonly old balloon salesman called Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), a 78-year-old widower who promised his late wife Ellie that he would take her away to "Paradise Falls", the most beautiful and awe-inspiring waterfall in South America (based on Venezuela's Angel Falls).

When developers threaten to move him into an old people's home, he decides to fulfill his promise to Ellie and embarks on a barmy plan to explore the globe in his own house.

However, after tying 10,000 ballons to his home and sailing up into the sky he gets a nasty shock when he finds an 8-year-old Wilderness Ranger called Russell stowed away on his front porch.

A report in Entertainment Weekly quotes co-director Pete Docter - who directed Monster Inc. - saying the Pixar team initially considered a desert island for Carl and Russell's destination but finally settled on Venezuela's majestic tabletop mountains after visiting the highest waterfall in the world Angel Falls and climbing a tepui called Mount Roraima.

This area in the far south of Venezuela near the borders with Brazil and Guyana is known as "The Lost World" after a 1912 adventure novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle - the creator of Sherlock Holmes - which tells the tale of a group of British explorers who climb a tepui only to find deadly dinosaurs and terrifying pterodactyls inhabiting its summit.

Conan Doyle based his imaginary Lost World on descriptions of Mount Roraima by the first people to climb it, Everard Im Thurn and Harry I. Perkins, who were on an 1884 expedition to conquer the mountain sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society.

Im Thurn described the summit of the flat-topped mountain as having "wildly extraordinary scenery" and "rocks and pinnacles of extraordinary shapes; seeming to defy every law of gravity!"

Anybody who's ever been to the summit of Roraima will instantly understand Im Thurn's wonder at the ancient black rocks of the summit and the strange shapes they have been worn into by eons of erosion by the rain.

The explorer marveled at "rocks ridiculous at every point with countless apparent caricatures of the faces and forms of men and animals, apparent caricatures of umbrellas, tortoises, churches, cannons and of innumerable other incongruous and unexpected objects."

The Pixar team have done an incredible job of recreating the strange summit of Roraima in Up.

To make sure they got the feel of such an otherwordly place, the director Pete Docter and 11 Pixar artists climbed Roraima in 2004.

"We hiked up to the top of the mountain and stayed there for three nights, painting and sketching," Docter says, adding "it was great" and "everybody made it out alive."

In another interview he described Venezuela's Lost World of tepui mountains as "a fantastic, weird place" with the "oldest rock on earth".

Ronnie Del Carmen, a story artist who worked on the film, writes on his blog that visiting Roraima was "the grand daddy of all research trips. Easily the most adventurous, rigorous trip I've ever been involved in (and I've been in a few. They are a walk in the park by comparison)."

According to del Carmen there was "danger at every turn: snakes, falling off cliffs, lethal bugs, spelunking under a crumbling cave ceiling... you know, fun."

"Up!" will be the first Pixar film to be presented in Disney Digital 3-D.

It is also the first animated feature to ever kick off the prestigious Cannes film festival - after it shared the limelight on 13 May with Quentin Tarantino's movie "Inglourious Basterds" and Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus" - Heath Ledger's last movie.

Pixar's Up will go on US release on 29 May and a video game based on the movie came out on 26 May.

By Russell Maddicks

To buy the DVD of "Up!" in the UK click here:

To buy the DVD of "Up!" in the USA click here:



To buy "UP: The Video Game" click here:




Arthur Conan Doyle's epic adventure yarn "The Lost World" is set in Venezuela's Gran Sabana region


Related posts:

Report on Jimmie Angel and the "Discovery" of Angel Falls

Auyan-tepui, Angel Falls and Pemon myths

Video clip of Angel Falls from David Attenborough's BBC series "Planet Earth"

Spectacular video clip of oldest base Jumper to leap from the top of Angel Falls

Indigenous Pemon myth: "The Great Flood and the Creation of Roraima"




From Disney*Pixar comes "Up", a comedy adventure about 78-year-old balloon salesman Carl Fredericksen, who finally fulfills his lifelong dream of a great adventure when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America.

But he discovers all too late that his biggest nightmare has stowed away on the trip: an overly optimistic 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell.

'Up' takes audiences on a thrilling journey where the unlikely pair encounter wild terrain, unexpected villains and jungle creatures.

From the Academy Award-nominated director Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.), Disney*Pixar's "Up" invites you on a hilarious journey into a lost world, with the least likely duo on Earth.

Up will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D in select theatres.

Make Angel Falls one of the 7 Wonders of Nature

Newsflash! The results are in and Angel Falls is one of the 28 finalists vying to become one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature. Read about it here:

After the success of the 7 New Wonders of the World campaign in 2007, the organizers have now launched a similar internet search for the Seven Wonders of Nature and Venezuela's Angel Falls could be one of them - if enough people vote for it.

Back in 2007 more than 100 million people from all over the world cast votes for hundreds of architechural gems.

The final seven Wonders of the World were Machu Picchu in Peru, the Pyramid of Chichen Itza in Mexico, Christ the Redeemer in Rio, Brazil, the Colosseum, in Rome, Italy, the Great Wall of China, the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, and the Taj Mahal in India.

This time it's all about natural treasures and, apart from Angel Falls, Venezuela has seven other candidates, including the Los Roques Archipelago, Auyantepui Mountain, Mount Roraima, Pico Bolivar, Sarisarinama Mountain, the Guacharo Cave, the Gran Sabana and Canaima National Park.

The voting system is simple, you just have to visit this page and introduce your email and a few details that they promise will not be used for any purposes apart from the voting.

Basically, every vote counts, so please get in there and give the Venezuelan candidates some votes.

Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world, has a good chance of making it into the final 21 if we all mobilize our friends and families to make their votes count.

On 29 September, Angel Falls was 29th on the the live ranking list of the 77 top candidates, with Asia dominating all the spots in the top 10. That's a pretty cool result, considering that Mount Everest is at number 12.

And there's a long way still to go.

Voting for the nominees will continue through to 31 December 2008, when the candidates will be whittled down to one per country, with only the top candidate from each country being allowed to proceed.

Then on 7 July, 2009 the New7Wonders of Nature panel led by Professor Federico Mayor, former Director-General of UNESCO, will review the top 77 nominees and choose 28 finalists, to be announced on 21 July 2009.

Those 28 finalists will then be put to the popular vote.

But before that it's important that the Venezuelan entries get official support. Angel Falls has support from a sponsoring body in Venezuela but it has not been officially recognized yet.

Meanwhile, Iguazu Falls has the full backing of Brazil and Argentina.

Rather ominously, a note on the new7Wonders website for Angel Falls says that unless the issue of sponsorship is resolved Angel Falls "will be eliminated from the finalist section".

But don't despair. Get voting. And lets get all the Venezuelan entries high on that top 77 list, where they deserve to be.

By Russell Maddicks

Report on Jimmie Angel and the "Discovery" of Angel Falls

Video clip of Angel Falls from David Attenborough's BBC series "Planet Earth"

Spectacular video clip of oldest base Jumper to leap from the top of Angel Falls

Travel article: Cueva del Guacharo - Oilbirds and Elephant Ears

Jimmie Angel and Angel Falls - The truth behind the legend

Seventy years ago, on 9 October, 1937, US bush pilot James Crawford Angel, better known as Jimmie, carefully positioned his Flamingo monoplane "El Rio Caroni" for a landing on top of the vast heart-shaped mesa mountain Auyan-tepui in Venezuela's isolated Gran Sabana region.

According to Jimmie's later accounts, the plan was to stay a few days and search for gold, But in such a wild and distant region of Venezuela plans seldom run smoothly. When the plane hit a soft spot on the tepuy during the landing it nosed-up, damaging the fuel line.


The accident left Jimmie, his wife Marie, fellow explorer Gustavo Heny and Miguel Delgado, Heny's gardener, unharmed but they were now stranded atop Auyan-tepui.

The only way down was on foot, across unmapped terrain and with limited supplies. Eleven days later, exhausted but alive, the party reached Kamarata on the other side of the tepuy. As news of their adventure spread Jimmie Angel's name became inextricably linked with the waterfall that he had first seen in 1933: Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world and Venezuela's greatest natural treasure.


Jimmie Angel and his exploits have since become the stuff of legend for anybody visiting Venezuela. His plane may have been taken down from the top of Auyan-tepui but it still stands outside Ciudad Bolivar airport, where modern-day tourists start their trips to Angel Falls.

So who was Jimmie Angel?

To try and get at the truth behind the legend, I spoke to Karen Angel, Jimmie's niece, who has been tracking down the truth about his exploits for the Jimmie Angel Historical Project, a not-for-profit organization she runs from the United States.

Q: Jimmie and his passengers had been planning the landing near the falls for a long time and had brought a lot of supplies. Heny and Catalan explorer Felix Cardona Puig had even scouted routes up Auyan-tepui from Guayaraca, near Kamarata, the route the party used to get down. Was the crash-landing a publicity stunt to get Jimmie's name on the map as some have suggested?

Jimmie Angel loved his airplane "El Rio Caroni". He would never have intentionally harmed it. He also had an important job coming up with the American Museum of Natural History and was to be the pilot-guide for the 1938-1939 Phelps’ Venezuelan Expedition to Auyan-tepui. Losing his plane on the mountain meant he could not do the AMNH job. So it was a big hardship. Jimmie didn't have extra money tucked away for a rainy day. He and Marie had to leave Venezuela in 1937 to obtain a new plane and did not return until 1938.

Q: But why would he take his wife with him? Surely it was dangerous?


Marie loved being with Jimmie on his adventures. She acted as his navigator. They were very much in love and she was very devoted to him. She only went back to the USA later because the two children became ill with malaria. Both his wives, Virginia his first wife and Marie, were good-looking redheads who loved adventure.

Q: And all those preparations beforehand?

Jimmie definitely thought the river of gold was up there. He also knew that bush pilots who didn't prepare didn't make it back home. And Jimmie was a very good bush pilot.

Q: How famous was he in his lifetime?

He wasn't that well known in the United States but he was very famous in South America. Ornithologist Thomas E. Gilliard's articles about him in the Saturday Evening Post and the Natural History magazine in the United States spread his story. And Ruth Robertson's 1949 article for National Geographic was important, because it proved Angel Falls was the highest waterfall in the world.

Q: What's your interest in Jimmie Angel?

This is my family story, if you like. My father Clyde Marshall was Jimmie's youngest brother and I just felt people should know more about him. Not just the legends that he helped to create but the facts. I'm more interested in Jimmie's work with the scientific teams that explored the Gran sabana region, such as paleontologist G. Gaylord Simpson and Gilliard, than the "the river of gold" stories that everybody always asks about.

Q: How did the Jimmie Angel Historical Project Come
about?

In 1994 I decided it was time I went to Venezuela and saw Auyan-tepui and the falls for myself so I signed up for a tour. I met so many people who had heard of Jimmie Angel but there was so little accurate information that I felt I should do something to set the story straight, to fill in the gaps and give a more rounded picture of the man. In 1996 I started the Jimmie Angel Historical Project and commenced doing research by interviewing people who knew him and explored the archives that contained information about him.

Q: Have you climbed Auyan-tepui?

Yes, in 1994. I have also been to the base of the waterfall by canoe twice, in 1994 and 2002. But it wasn't just the falls I wanted to see.
Jimmie was really close to the Pemon people of the area and he and Marie adopted a young child called Jose Manuel Ugarte.
I didn't expect to find him but he was in Kamarata when I arrived in 1994. He was 78 years old and was building a house for one of his sons. He had six children.
I also met my two "cousins" Santo and Nered Ugarte in 2002 which was really special.

Q: But did Jimmie really meet an old gold prospector called McCracken in a Panama City bar in 1924 and fly with him to flat-topped mountain in Venezuela where they extracted 60 pounds of gold from a riverbed in a few days?

Did you say 1924? I heard the year was 1921. Anyway, I can't substantiate that he did meet this prospector, but I can't say that he didn't. Jimmie did embellish his stories throughout his life as he looked for investors willing to finance his expeditions, because that left him free to seek out his El Dorado. So part of it was marketing. But even if you strip away the legendary stories of fighting with Lawrence of Arabia or meeting McCracken, you still have a man who lived an extraordinarily adventurous life, who fully enjoyed what he did and was a devoted father loved by his family.

Q: He seems like a larger than life character. There's something very Humphrey Bogart about him in the photos. Why has there never been a Jimmie Angel movie?

He was very charismatic and women loved him. Most people know him from the photos taken at the end of his life but he was very handsome when he was young. There are many movie scripts out there but they've never been made. Even when he was alive there were movie projects about his life. I think there will be one someday. It's just such a great story and Auyantepuy, the Gran Sabana and Angel Falls are such a great backdrop for a movie.

Q: And the end of the story is very romantic too...

Yes. Jimmie Angel died in Panama in 1956, aged 57, but in July 1960 his widow, Marie and his two sons Jimmy and Rolan, with Gustavo Heny and his friend Patricia Grant, flew over Angel Falls and scattered his ashes.

Grant wrote afterwards: "As we skimmed by the Falls the ashes floated downward whipped by the wind and mixed in the spray, and thus our beloved Jimmie returned to his waterfall."

I think his name will live forever. If he'd been named Jimmie Smith it would be a different story but Angel just seems right for such a special place.

By Russell Maddicks

The photos for this article, apart from the photo of the Rio Caroni outside Ciudad Bolivar Airport which is mine, come courtesy of the Jimmie Angel Historical Project. The top photo was taken by Gustavo Heny and is part of the ©2006 Jimmie Angel Historical Project in association with the Enrique Lucca Collection. Click on the photos to make them larger.

Angel Falls in National Geographic Traveller Magazine 

Let's Make Angel Falls one of the 7 Wonders of Nature

Video clip of Angel Falls from David Attenborough's BBC series "Planet Earth"

Spectacular video clip of oldest base Jumper to leap from the top of Angel Falls