British climbers scale Venezuela's Autana Tepuy

By Russell Maddicks
A British expedition led by UK climber Leo Houlding has made the first successful ascent of the east face of Venezuela's Cerro Autana - a remote, flat-topped tepuy mountain in the Amazonas region that is considered sacred by the local Piaroa people. 
The higher 700m South West Face of Autana was climbed by Jose Pereyra and John Arran in 2002. 
The 2012 team was sponsored by Berghaus and made up of British climbers Houlding and Jason Pickles, US speed climber Sean "Stanley" Leary, award-winning climber and filmmaker Alastair Lee, and local climbers Yupi Rangel and Alejandro Lamus. 
They scaled Cerro Autana's east face between 28 January and 5 February 2012 and named their route The Yopo Wall (400m, E6 6b, A1).
A spectacular high-definition movie of the expedition shot by Lee will be released as a movie and DVD in August 2012, including: footage of a ceremony with a Piaroa shaman involving psychotropic "yopo" snuff to bless the venture; extreme trekking through the forest, the arduous climb; and the five nights the team spent in the magnificent caves that cut right through the centre of the mountain. 
This is quite a remarkable feat and something many other climbers have tried and failed to do in the past, mainly because it is illegal to climb Venezuela's tepuis. 
Houlding and his team not only had to battle blood-sucking insects and other rainforest perils before they climbed Autana's sheer walls, they also had to sneak in all their climbing and filming equipment and pay a considerable sum of money to a local Piaroa group to allow them the privilege of being the first up the east face.
They chose this route because it is remote from the other Piaroa communities in the area and offered less chance of the climbers being discovered by the authorities and the expedition being stopped. 
That payment - reportedly some $10,000 - has angered local climbers, who say that by paying so much to the Piaroa, Houlding's well-sponsored foreign team have put the mountain out of reach for others.
Adolfo Madinabeita, a pioneer in Venezuela of tepuy clmbing, claims that when he approached the same Piaroa group in February 2012 to climb Autana they told him they would not allow him access to the mountain for less than $20,000, making the total cost of any expedition just too expensive for him to undertake.
The spat has generated so much heat in local climbing circles in Venezuela that Houlding has released an open letter explaining why his team took the decision to pay such a large sum to climb Autana. 


Letter from Leo Houlding to Adolfo Madinabeitia 
Dear Adolfo,
We are very sorry to hear that the Piaroa Indian community asked for such an expensive fee and that you were again unable to climb Autana.
As I told you at the Mendi film festival in Vitoria in December, when they asked us for $10,000 we too almost changed our plans to climb Acopan or Amuri where the local Pemon Indians are more accommodating to climbers and trips are cheaper. However as you said to me over dinner if they were to open a trail, provide boat transfers, accommodation and food in the village, equipment portering services, guiding and general expedition support then it is not only a fee for permission it is a total cost for all services.  As you are somebody for whom I have great respect, I am also sorry that you are so upset that you have felt it necessary to attack our expedition publicly without contacting our mutual Venezuelan friend Yupi or myself first to find out the facts.
Please allow me to present to you some more information about our expedition.
As you know climbing all Tepuis is illegal in Venezuela. After Yupi climbed Salto Angels last year with a Brazilian team they were arrested and much of their gear was confiscated.
Autana is recognised and protected as a national monument further increasing the illegality of climbing it and increasing the chance of getting caught.
Climbing Autana is further complicated by it's geographical location in the State of Amazonas close to the Columbian border.
Columbian FARC and ELN have been found hiding in Amazonas. Oil and gas pipe lines have been blown up and massive arms shipments have been discovered.
Combined with the illicit smuggling of cheap Venezuelan petrol to Columbia and Columbian Cocaine to Venezuela, the state of Amazonas has a heavy and visible military presence with many road blocks and general increased security checks everywhere.  This greatly complicates getting to Autana with big wall climbing gear, especially for Gringos as all the military officers know climbing Autana is not allowed.
Obtaining official permission to climb Autana is impossible. Obtaining the local Piaroa Indians permission and support is complicated, expensive and not guaranteed, as you know from your unsuccessful attempt 3 years ago.
Unpaid fees from an unsuccessful Russian expedition in 2007 greatly exaggerated an already fragile situation.
The Piaroa are suspicous of outsiders and not interested in allowing people to climb their sacred peak.
At the beginning of December Venezuelan climbers Yupi and Alejo went to meet the community taking gifts of food, medicine and tools and explained to them our intentions.
They set up a small cinema with a laptop computer and showed the whole village our film The Asgard Project, which the Indians loved.
They told them we wanted to climb only for adventure, about our link with Jose Luis Pereyra who they remembered and that we wanted to make a film like the one they had just seen.
They made friends with the villagers and their leader, Juan Pablo and convinced them that we could be trusted.
The community decided they would be willing help but said it would be difficult, complicated, risky for them and expensive for us.
They would not agree to let us climb the west face as we wanted because it could be seen by the other communities. (especially head torches at night)
If they found out we were there we would have to pay all 6 communities the same fee.
However the East face cannot be seen by any communities they would allow us to climb there as long as we promised to keep our presence secret until we had left. 
They knew climbing Autana is illegal and that they would be breaking the law. Government officials and military checks would have to avoided or bribed.
We would have to smuggle all of our equipment and supplies in at least a week before we arrived. We would then travel as tourists. 
They would transport it at night via secret river ports, open a trail and porter all our gear to the East face in secret.
They made a list of all the things they wanted in exchange for their support. The list included tools, agricultural seed, medicine and other goods to be equally distributed to every family in the small community.
The cash equivalent came to US$10,000 and they wanted it all in advance. They were not open to any negotiations.

When we first met Juan Pablo and Alberto in Puerto Ayacucho out of respect for their Piaroa beliefs we undertook a Yopo ceremony with their Shaman to seek blessing and spiritual permission to climb their sacred Tepuy. 
It was an extremely powerful, terrifying and amazing hallucinogenic experience, more memorable than any of the climbing on our route, The Yopo wall. The Shaman was happy our intentions were pure and our new Indian friends were more trusting and close to us following the ceremony and our journey it their beliefs.

The Piaroa are a fascinating culture of tolerance, peace and fairness. 
We taught Alberto how to jummar and brought him 200m up the wall to camp with us in the amazing Cuveo Autana.
The first Piaroa ever to climb to the sacred cave. (the others went by helicopter or astral projection).

We did have some problems with communication, planning and their portering.
They only carried small loads and would arrive on the wrong day or take things to the wrong place.
On the way out we had to two loads ourselves as most the Indians would not come back as they had heard a Jaguar in the area of which they are terrified.
However we left on very good terms with the whole village turning out to see us off and warm, respectful friendships established.

We knew you were planning to go right after us. Yupi even mentioned he may go with you.
I thought the Indians would probably charge you much less than us as we had already done so much work establishing good relations with them.
We had already paid them to open a trail, they had tested the secret access plan and you were only 2 people compared to our 7. 
However I think that they felt that it was too difficult and risky for them to help two foreigners they don't know or trust. 
Your accusation that we paid extra to stop them allowing you access is ridiculous and offensive.
This can only be explained by your frustration at us succeeding where you did not and some personal resentment towards sponsored climbers and high production value adventure film?

In all the Piaroa community provided our expedition with about 100 man-days of work including six 10 hours boat journeys and many 20+ hour days.
They were an essential part of the joy and success of our adventure and in retrospect I think what we paid reflected the effort and risk they invested.
We are not concerned with a price per meter as you suggest. For us Autana, Tepuys and expeditions are about more than just rock climbing.

Nobody is allowed to climb Autana. Not Sponsored Gringo's, Middle class Venezuelan's or Spanish legend's.
We have not established an unreasonable price closing Autana to local climbers as you suggest.
It was already closed to everyone. There is no fair price. It is illegal. Climbers are not welcome and nobody climbs there.
That is why Acopan is so popular and Autana has only been climbed 3 times ever and not for 10 years.
We have opened the dialog for negotiations and have shown the Piaroa that some outsiders are honest and trust worthy.
It is for the Piaroa community to decide who they will help and what it will cost, not the Venezuelan climbers, not me and not you.

Better than to accuse and argue about what is a fair bribe to pay somebody to break the law on your behalf is to try to change these pointless laws for every bodies benefit.
There is some progress in Caracas and the Venezuelan climbing community with the support of people like you, me and Desnivel perhaps we can encourage the Venezuelan government to review it's stance on Tepuy climbing? Then fair prices can be established for fair, legitimate work not the illegal smuggling of outsiders into sacred, off limits areas.

We drilled no holes in Autana and left nothing but our rappel stations.
We respected the Piaroa traditions and helped them to buy medicine and tools to the benefit of their poor community.
We have done no harm to anybody and will hopefully bring entertainment and inspiration to many with our film - Autana.
We feel completely comfortable ethically and morally with our actions.

Congratulations on your new route on Acopan and good luck with your future expeditions.

From the Yopo Wall, Autana team.

Leo Houlding
Sean Leary
Jason Pickles
Alejandro Lamus
Yupi Rangel 
Alastair Lee
Dave Reeves

Mutant hermaphrodite mega-piranha movie set in Venezuela

You couldn't make this stuff up... Venezuelan mutant hermaphrodite mega-piranha trying to take over the world?!!?!

Did they even shoot this in the Orinoco?

Jungle Adventures on the Casiquiare in New Book

In 2005, the writers Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt travelled to the remote jungles along Venezuela's border with Brazil and Colombia to explore for themselves the mysterious Casiquiare Canal, a river joining the waters of the Orinoco River with the Amazon River via the Rio Negro. They travelled with Lucho Cherry Navarro, who organizes trips to the Casiquiare on a boat called the Iguana, which once belonged to the French oceanographer Jaques Cousteau.

The reason for their trip was to clear up some of the persisting myths surrounding the Casiquiare and to publish their findings in Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society.

In the end they came back with so much material that the only way to do it justice was to write up their travels in a book and so in October 2009 they published: "Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon".

Recently, I caught up with Richard and Miriam to hear more about their experiences in Venezuela, especially their visit to the Yanomami village of Viruinave, on the Casiquiare, and their frightening brush with FARC guerrillas in Colombia.

The photos, shot on the Orinoco and in the Yanomami village of Viriunave on the Casiquiare, are all copyright to Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt.

Question: After publishing your first book together about US pilots in the frozen wastes of Tibet what made you opt for the heat and humidity of the Venezuelan jungle?

Richard: The book really began life as a magazine article. A few years ago - in 2005 - Geographical, the official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society in London, commissioned us to write an article about the Casiquiare, a strange river in Venezuela that is unique among rivers in that it is the only one in the world that manages to flow over a watershed - the watershed that separates the Orinoco and the Amazon river systems.
The magazine wanted an article about the peculiar geography of this river, because by flowing over a watershed, the river appears to flow uphill, and that, of course, is not possible.
Anyway, to write the article, we travelled by boat along the upper Orinoco and then down the full length of the Casiquiare to reach the Rio Negro, which runs into the Amazon near Manaus.
We then wrote the article. But so many things happened to us on our journey that when we came back we realised we had more then enough material for a book. So we wrote "Along the River that Flows Uphill".
It wasn't intended to be an antidote to our trip to Tibet - it just worked out that way.

Question: Was it a good choice for your second collaboration? Did you connect with Venezuela and find the adventure you were looking for?

Miriam: "Yes" is the short answer. We did connect with Venezuela - not so much with Caracas, which is where we flew to in order to begin our journey, but certainly with the rest of the country. I've been studying Spanish for several years now and I have to admit to a bias in favour of Spanish speaking people. We've travelled a lot in both South and Central America, and we've always had positive experiences.

Question: One of the most dramatic episodes in the book is your meeting with the Yanomami Indians both on the Orinoco River and the Casiquiare Canal. The image of the Yanomami fostered by anthropologists in the 1970s and 1980s is of a warrior tribe of "Fierce People". More recently, they have been seen as victims of exploitative missionaries, disease-spreading miners, vote-hungry politicians and those very same anthropologists. Did your understanding of the Yanomami change after spending time with them?

Miriam: We felt privileged to see the Yanomami, as it's highly likely that their way of life will radically change in the very near future. I should say that we visited the Yanomami only in villages along the Orinoco and the Casiquiare, where the river traffic brings them into contact with the modern world - we did not visit any of the nomadic tribes that live in the jungles of Venezuela and Brazil.
It was still possible to see how they used to live - especially along the Casiquiare, which is much more remote than the Orinoco - but at the same time we caught a glimpse of their future, as they adopt many of the goods that are already changing their way of life - things like plastic buckets, steel machetes, T-shirts and shorts. Until recently, everything they made and used was biodegradable, but now they're beginning to have a litter problem.
I can't say that the Yanomami we met lived up to their reputation for violence, although they were not an overtly friendly people. It's true, as we relate in the book, that we did have a run-in with a Yanomami Indian who threatened us with a poison-tipped arrow, but that was more our fault than his.

Question: The Casiquiare Canal was described in detail by the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt who travelled from the Rio Negro to the Orinoco in 1800. Did you learn anything new on your trip to dispel any of the myths surrounding this "monstrous error of geography", as one geographer described it?

Richard: In the 18th century, no-one believed that a river could flow over a watershed, so the Casiquiare was indeed dismissed as a 'monstrous error of geography', as we say in our book. Humboldt was not the first European to travel along it - that honour belongs to a Jesuit priest called Father Manuel Roman who paddled the river in 1744 - but he was the first to report on his journey and be believed. Humboldt described the bifurcation - the point where the Casiquiare leaves the Orinoco - in quite dramatic terms, but in fact there's nothing really there to mark the spot. The Casiquiare just slides off to one side of the Orinoco and disappears into the jungle. There's no real fanfare.

Question: So how does the Casiquiare join the Orinoco to the Amazon?

Richard: A certain amount of confusion was created by the translated description of Humboldt's journey. He wrote that the Casiquiare "changes direction", which a lot of people assumed meant that it changed the direction of its flow - sometimes flowing out of the Orinoco and into the Negro, then sometimes reversing itself and flowing the other way. This is still a popular misconception, which you will find in many Internet searches for 'Casiquiare'. In fact, the Casiquiare flows in one direction only, and what Humboldt meant is that the river changes direction because it meanders, and that's quite a different thing.
As for a full explanation of its behaviour, we deal with that in our book.

Question: Humboldt describes his passage down the Casiquiare as one of constant torture from moquitos and black fly, the feared "jejenes", that leave a nasty, raised bloodspot under the skin. What was the most uncomfortable part of your trip?

Miriam: It was all uncomfortable!
Basically, we were travelling on a river boat through the jungle. There were always insects, especially when we got off the boat and went on land, and all of them seemed either to bite or sting. It was also the rainy season - we had to go then, because in the dry season, the Casiquiare shrinks in size and can only be effectively travelled in a canoe or some other small boat. That didn't mean it was always raining - although when it did, it rained in sheets - but it did mean the humidity was extremely high. So you always felt wet or clammy. You never quite got entirely dry.

Question: You also mention a brush with guerillas from the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, in San Felipe, near San Carlos de Rio Negro? In the book you seem to respond quite calmly to the situation but was it scary?

Richard: That's right. FARC tried to kidnap us and hold us for ransom when we were foolish enough to stray over the border into Colombia. It was extremely frightening for both of us, but like a lot of events like this, it seems more frightening when we look back on it than it was at the time it occurred. Everything happened so quickly, and we were so focused on the best way to react that we didn't think through all the consequences. It's only now, when we reflect on what might have happened, that we appreciate how lucky we were to have escaped.
Over the past 20 or 30 years, FARC has kidnapped literally thousands of people. Most of their victims have been Colombians, which is why they don't get much international attention, and they are held in the most appalling conditions - literally chained to trees or to each other for eight, ten, twelve years. Maybe even more.

Question: You mention Lucho, the owner of the boat who took you from Puerto Ayacucho to the Casiquiare and Rio Negro, how did you get in touch with him and is the trip you took something that others could do?

Miriam: Before we went on our journey, we searched for possible guides on the Internet and in some of the more out-of-the-way guide books. Lucho is one, but there are others - people who, for a fee, will take you along the Casiquiare. It's possible for anyone to make the journey we did, but as we indicated, the time of year determines the size of boat you can travel on. In the dry season, you'll likely have to travel in a bongo - a kind of large, dugout canoe - and camp on the river bank. Only in the rainy season will you find a boat large enough for you to sleep on.

Question: One of the main problems of a long boat journey is boredom. How long were you on Lucho's boat? Did you ever fall out? What did you do to while away the hours?

Richard: We never had any problems with the other people on the boat. There were a lot of them, so the boat was crowded, but we all respected other people's space. We read a lot, and we wrote a lot - either the article we were there to complete, or in the journals we kept which later formed the backbone of our book. I suppose it could be considered boring, but the jungle is so strange, at least to us, that it's endlessly fascinating. Also, of course, we were able to get off the boat and visit a lot of communities along the way. This helped break up our journey, and also gave us a lot of good material for our book.

Question: For anybody who reads your book and wants to visit the Casiquiare, what advice would you give them?

Miriam: Plan well, and know what you're getting into. Consider going in a group of four or more, rather than just two. If something goes wrong you have more back-up.

Richard: Don't go into Colombia - at least not in the part near where Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela come together. It's almost entirely lawless, and to a large extent under the control of FARC.

Question: Richard spends much of the book lamenting the lost days of the great adventurers, especially his heroes, the Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone. Now people can Google Earth any spot on the planet, are there still great adventures to be had?

Richard: There are always great adventures to be had. One person's great adventure can be just another day in the office for somebody else.
I think nowadays the thing to consider when planning an adventure is the amount of risk you might possibly face, and whether or not that risk is worth taking, given the reward you hope to get. This is something we had not really considered before, but our brush with FARC made us think seriously about the level of risk we were prepared to accept. That's one of the themes that runs throughout the book - you want to push the envelope as people say, but not push it to the point where it breaks.




To purchase "Along the River That Flows Uphill: Between the Orinoco and the Amazon" click here:

The Dolphin People - Novel set in Venezuelan jungle

A small plane crashes deep in the Venezuelan jungle. A family fleeing the post-WWII nightmare of occupied Germany is captured by a warlike tribe living far from civilization. Fortunately for the blonde-haired newcomers the Indians believe they are magical river dolphins who have taken human form. Can the stranded Germans keep up the pretense? Or will they be discovered, cast out or killed?

A full-on survival story set in Venezuela's Amazonas region, Torsten Krol's debut novel "The Dolphin People" reinvents the Boys Own adventure yarn for a 21st century audience with some tongue-in-cheek twists that will have you laughing out loud or squirming in your seat.

The book starts with German teen Erich and his younger brother Zeppi leaving behind the ashes of a defeated Fatherland and setting sail for a new life in South America with their widowed mother Helga.

It's 1946 and Helga has agreed to marry her dead husband's brother Klaus, a doctor who has settled in southern Venezuela.

After a brief marriage in Ciudad Bolivar, Klaus takes his new family to the airport where they board a plane to a remote jungle camp. Flying into a storm over heavy jungle, the plane is buffeted by heavy winds and rain before crashing into a river, leaving Klaus, Erich, Zeppi and Helga cold, wet, lost and stranded, without food, shelter or hope of rescue.

The only thing Erich has managed to cling onto is the Iron Cross his dead father received from Adolf Hitler.

The family's adventure begins in earnest when Erich meets a group of naked men in the jungle, hunters from the Yayomi tribe, who believe these strange white people washed up on the river bank are mythical dolphin spirits in human form.

Before it is over, one unfortunate bather will be stripped to the bone by a frenzied school of razor-toothed piranhas, another will have experienced the excruciating pain of being entered by the insidious "willy fish", or candiru, and Erich will have grown from an innocent boy brought up with the certainties of Nazi Germany to a young man ready to fight for his survival.

In the meantime, Krol paints a caricatured but convincing portrait of his fictional Yayomi tribe, clearly based on the Yanomami given the specifics of their unique funeral ritual of eating the bones of the dead crushed into plantain soup.

By pitting Nazis against the Yayomi, Krol has created a novel that works on many levels. On the one hand it can be enjoyed as a traditional jungle adventure, but it can also be read as a critique of the "savage", "stone age" label so often applied when describing rainforest peoples.

Who are the savages here? The Yayomi, living in harmony with their environment, or the Nazi doctor Klaus, representing an ideology that engulfed the world in a brutal world war and justified the murder of 6 million men women and children because of their religion.

Klaus's certainty of his own racial superiority over the Yayomi rings especially hollow, knowing what we do of the Holocaust and the death camps.

This fast-paced page turner is a strong debut for Krol, who is better known for his second novel Callisto, a satirical sideswipe at Islamaphobia in the USA.

The author is something of a mystery himself. The publisher refuses to grant interviews with him, saying only that Krol is a reclusive Australian writer living in Queensland.

However, there has been speculation in the Australian press that he - or she - is an established author writing under a pseudonym.


From the Daily Telegraph - "50 of the Best Holiday Reads"
"Could this be the new Life of Pi? The Dolphin People is a madcap South American adventure story in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe, by the cult author Torsten Krol. A German widow and her two sons set sail for a new life in Venezuela, but become stranded with the stone-age Yayomi people, who fête them as reincarnated dolphin-gods. Unputdownable."

To buy "The Dolphin People" click here:

Cerro Autana - sacred mountain of the Piaroa

In the next few weeks I'll be travelling down to Puerto Ayacucho, the capital of Venezuela's Amazonas State.

The plan is to jump in a canoe and travel up the Orinoco and Autana rivers to the base of Cerro Autana, the sacred mountain of the Piaroa, a native tribe.

I hope to take photographs of the people and wildlife I meet along the way to post here.

So wish me luck, or buena suerte, and I'll try and bring you the highlights of my travels.

In the meantime, anybody planning a trip to Cerro Autana should contact Vicente Barletta, one of the most experienced and trusted guides in the Amazonas region.

I have travelled with Vicente and was really impressed with his knowledge of the region, the people, the river and his organization.

Vicente's company is called Terekay Adventure and operates out of Puerto Ayacucho.

Terekay Adventure
Web page: http://www.terekay.com.ve/web/
E-mail: terekayadventure@hotmail.com
Phone: 0414-4872123 or 0416-8385637