Islands of the Caribbean; the Orinoco & Amazon Rivers; the Brazilian states of Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco and ParanĂ¡; Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile & Easter Island, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela: Natural wonders, colonial cities, great food and fantastic music!

Monday 4 April 2011

Monte Roraima: Exploring the Tepuy

The Lost World on top of the table mountain was very extraterrestrial and is like nowhere else on Planet Earth. On the big day of grande exploracion, Jon sets his sights on walking through the infinite-looking rock formations, with Michela (the infamous Italian!), Yuichi and Seyha (The jolly Japanese duo) and our great Guyanese guide, Beneton. Without Beneton, we would have got lost very quickly as there are no distinguishing landmarks on the merciless 200+km2 surface. Sure there are some rocky features, such as the ‘Flying Turtle’ and the ‘Maverick’ and do you remember the Moai statues we were observing on Easter Island? There was the odd naturally occurring Moai look-alike here and there, complete with their stone hats. But these few rock formations would no way be enough for us to find our way back to camp later. As well as these marvels, there were entire glittering quartz crystal valleys, which mystically illuminated themselves using the tiny amount of sunlight that was penetrating the thick cloud cover. It was like being on another planet!













Meanwhile, we were heading to Beneton’s country, Guyana, and also to Brazil. To be more precise, we were in search of the ‘Triple Point’ frontier marker, which separates Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil, and we couldn’t help but climb the large bollard just to be in three countries at once!

Venezuelan people don’t really see it that way as on their maps they have a large extra chunk that overlaps with the Guyanese territory which they call the “Zona de Reclamacion”. In fact, they feel so strongly about this that some Venezuelan with a lot of spare time on his hands took the trouble to climb Monte Roraima, just to remove the plaque from the Guyana side of the monument. In the rest of the world, Guyana has the right to this land and that border is officially shared by the three countries. And as Beneton said himself, “It’s not the plaque that’s important, it’s the land.”

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