Roraima bush toad escapes tarantula in spectacular BBC film

This amazing footage from the BBC series Life shows how a hopless pebble toad uses a remarkable escape strategy when faced with a predator, in this case a tarantula spider.

But have David Attenborough and the BBC wildlife team got their names wrong this time?

The toad is identified in the programme notes as Oreophrynella nigra, commonly known as the Kukenan bush toad (sapito del Kukenan).

But if it was filmed on Roraima then it is more likely to be the endemic Roraima bush toad, Oreophrynella quelchii.

These knobbly, jet black toads are about an inch in length and are often mistaken for small black stones by hikers to the summit of Roraima.

A species older than the dinosaurs, they can remain still for hours, preferring to wait for the rain to wash them somewhere else.

David Attenborough explores freaky plants on Roraima

British TV naturalist David Attenborough climbs Venezuela's Mount Roraima to get up close and personal with some of the freaky carnivorous plants that live up there.

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

Bradt Guide to Venezuela goes to Roraima

Thanks to Dharmender Singh Tathgur the Bradt Guide to Venezuela is on the move. This is a shot of the book in front of the imposing tepui Roraima taken from the stoney banks of the Rio Kukenan.

Dharmender's next stop is the highest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls - or Kerepakupai-Meru in the language of the local Pemon people. Let's hope he gets some shots to rival the spectacular cover photo of the falls.

This photo shows the Bradt Guide to Venezuela in the Pemon village of Paraitepuy, the starting and finishing point for treks to the top of Roraima. Keep sending the photos. It's so great to see the book being used to get people safely round Venezuela.

La Gran Sabana - Spectacular slideshow of images

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.