Rappelling from Angel Falls part 1 is the last thing that happened to me, but before that I will tell you how to get to Venezuela. To do this, you must first have a good and crazy friend, even two are needed for more adrenaline, who are crazy adventurers to the bone and every thought, every movie or photo gives them a reason to dream. The craziest ideas to turn into goals that will bring together a handful of like-minded people living life outside the cliché and looking for strong feelings beyond the frame.
The two watch the movie Point Break at different times and each of them thinks about something as extreme as descending to the unfathomable 982 meters altitude of Angel falls. In the film, this is against gravity and is done by an incredible team of extreme athletes (with the help of a huge film crew and stuntmen within six months). One day they share their dreams and already have a plan. There are several other people, including me, longing for a challenge, a test of mind and body and adrenaline in high doses.
Rappel from Angel Falls
Two years of thirst, planning, covid, preparation, equipment … and we are already there. A long journey from Europe. Six hours west. Immigrants are wondering what to do with us as we are the only tourists on the whole plane and we are not at all bound by the allegations that we are coming to Venezuela to descend by rappelling on the left flank of Angel Falls. We stayed in a hotel in Caracas, from which it is forbidden to go out, that while you blink and you have already been kidnapped for money. The new regime has made poverty even more tangible for locals.
Tragic service, although the goodwill and desire of the employees. A long sleepless night, provided by the high decibels of music from the party in the next yard, ended at exactly six o’clock the next morning, when we were back with our backpacks and on our way to the next flight to Canaima National Park, an exclusive territory of the Pemon Indian tribe. Canaima Airport, where no computers have been heard of and everything is handwritten, including boarding passes, as it became clear on the way back, without passport checks and any other formalities common around the world, even in the most remote corners that I have reached.
We are already in heaven. Bungalows on the shores of Canaima Lagoon, jungle, waterfalls, air, no Internet access, freedom. We board a boat and head to the opposite crashing waters, giving life to leaping rainbows. A walk in an Indian thread and a real merging with the majesty of nature, passing behind the pouring tons of water at El Sapo waterfall, leaving not even the slightest opportunity for a dry place on us. Whoever remembered, put on a swimsuit. The rest – as it came. Now I understand how important it is to have socks.
Pemon Indians live in small groups in something like family communities and are territorially distant, sometimes more than ten kilometers from each other. They do not have access to electricity, water (except rivers) and canals. To shops and groceries too. In order to provide themselves with the necessities that they cannot obtain from their surroundings, they collect “requests” and when there is enough goods to fill a helicopter or plane, they buy what they need, load it and the vehicle flies down from air ordered. They pay in native gold and US dollars, usually donated by missions or in rare cases by adventurers like us Helicopter Day and first contact with the Pemon Tepui, sacred to the Indians.
No matter how much you watch videos and photos on the web, there is no chance to get a real idea of where you are going and what awaits you. Sometimes it’s nice not to be left with a choice. Not for anything else, but you don’t have time to think very much about him. Carefully and cautiously, so as not to hurt, I step on the stones covered with moss, which gave life to bizarre plants, which in 60% are endemic species, ie. they can be found only here among our entire planet. A rainy river, which enters a canyon from a gentle current, turns into a rapids, so strong that it overflows from the edge and turns again and again into the highest waterfall on Earth – Salto Angel.
Here the weather is extremely changeable and unpredictable. As it burns and no protective factor can save you from burning, you are sucked in by an ice cloud, and then it rains on you. Sometimes our tents literally float in water, and if it’s not the thick nylons lined at the bottom, you can go to bed naked. Two days of rope climbing training, overcoming deep cliffs, learning to listen and perform, learning to trust and balance, getting to know each other and each other until the day of the descent. And so for two more days.
How to rappelling from Angel Falls part 1
Mud to the ears, first rappelling, …. we become one with a common goal. And it is so sweet and happy after all the effort to reward yourself with a bath on the river, to put on clean clothes and eat some food. To feel the luxury of being in this place with these people. Far from the vanity of life we come from. Far from the problems we often create for ourselves. Far from feeling that something has been given to us or belongs to us.