Angel Falls, Day 2: Part One - The Flight to Kavak

The first line of my journal entry for July 25, 2008 reads: “As I write this we are flying over the State of Bolivar in Venezuela in a single engine, six seat Cessna airplane with the wings on top. It is about the size of a VW Van with wings.” I knew we would be flying in a single engine plane on this trip, but the reality of it did not hit me until we arrived at the airport in Ciudad Bolivar, which was a most appropriate place to begin the trip to Angel Falls, being that Jimmy Angel’s airplane, the one he discovered Angel Falls while flying, is located there. This is our airplane.

I was so impressed (and by that I mean terrified) that I took about a dozen pictures of it, mainly as evidence that I actually flew in a single engine airplane. Many of you know that I am not a comfortable flier. In fact you could characterize me as a “white knuckle” flier. Nevertheless, we stuffed all of our things into the plane, behind the last row of seats, and squeezed into our seats, which afforded about as much leg room as the back seat of a sports car. In the two seats behind us were two Pemon women headed back to their village with bags full of goods, mostly groceries, recently purchased in Ciudad Bolivar. We taxied out to the runway, then the pilot latched down the small window on his left, said something in Spanish into his headset and gunned the engine. The noise was deafening and the rush of wind from the propeller blew the little window open again. The pilot latched it shut again, took a bite of the pastry he was eating for breakfast, adjusted some type of instrument and let go of the brake. Little planes do not take long to get airborne, and as we careened down the runway, bouncing up and down like we were in a dune buggy, we were suddenly airborne. The words that kept running through my head were: oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Little by little I calmed down once I realized that we were not going to fall out of the sky. I could not hear anything over the engine. We banked, climbed more and before I knew it we were underway to Angel Falls.

Once we were pointed in the right direction, due south, the pilot picked up a huge wad of money and started to count it (perhaps the revenue for the day?) Then he took a newspaper he had on the dashboard, pulled out the sports section, handed the rest to our guide who was riding shotgun (and presumably co-pilot) and they both settled in and began to read the newspaper. Apparently airplanes fly themselves. We continued to gradually gain altitude (I know because I was watching the altimeter) until we reached about 9700 ft. The pilot was navigating using a Garmin GPS just like mine. We flew over a series of hills that were like huge rocks sitting on plains and then over Lake Guri, a huge man made lake. Gradually the lake became more and more like a series of rivers, almost like a river delta, until I noticed a set of rapids, first one then more and more until there seemed to be river channels and rapids everywhere. We were over the Coroni River and were entering Tepui country. Up ahead were ominous banks of clouds which we flew straight into. We were immediately pummeled by strong winds and the little airplane was thrown about. One thing I did not realize until we were in the storm clouds was that small planes “yaw” which means the tail is pushed from side to side and the plane actually slides sideways through the air. We hit air pockets that pushed us down several hundred feet at a time (remember, I was fixated on the altimeter). Then we would hit another and bounce up a few hundred feet. We continued to bounce, drop, rise, and yaw, all the while the pilot was reading the paper and occasionally talking with our guide about something he read. Finally, he put the paper away, checked the GPS, turned on the windshield wipers (it was raining) said something into the radio and took manual control of the plane. The clouds began to break a little and I suddenly caught sight of tepuis to our left and right. Then we went back into a cloud bank. A few minutes later I saw the ground about 500 feet below us through a break in the clouds. Remember, we had been at 9700 feet. We were over Auyan Tepui.

Auyan-Tepui shrouded in mist.

The surface of the tepui is like a maze of crevasses and amazing rock formations. Eventually the maze formed into a main channel full of water. Our guide informed us that was the river from which Angel Falls gets its water. We followed the river until suddenly we flew over the edge of the tepui. Our guide turned to us and yelled “Angel Falls” and there it was we had flown right over it. The pilot executed a 90 degree banked turn, that normally would have sent me into a panic, but I was so thrilled at seeing Angel Falls, that I forgot to panic. Instead I just started firing away with the camera, shot after shot as we again approached the falls and then as we flew away from the falls. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

Angel Falls from the airplane.

We turned back to the south, went back into the clouds and after about ten minutes began a gradual descent. When we got below the cloud cover I could see that we were over a green plain dotted with clumps of plam trees. We got lower and lower, but there was no runway in sight. It finally dawned on me that we were not landing on a runway, we were going to land on the grass. We touched down, bounced a few times and rolled to a gentle stop in a light drizzle. We were in Kavak.

The little Cessna on the "landing strip" in Kavak.

Kavak