Roraima – lost world
The entire south-eastern part of Venezuela, located in South America, is occupied by La Gran Sabana – the great savanna, which is crossed by the Caroni River, the right tributary of the Orinoco. There are many unusual plateaus with steep, inaccessible walls resembling huge tables. One of the greatest tables is Roraima. It is near Venezuela’s border with Brazil and for a long time it was inaccessible to people. Only daredevils from the Indian tribes from time to time made their way to the enchanted land, as they thought. They told about a wonderful plateau with cascades of waterfalls and magical rivers with red and black waters.
The first European researcher who visited this area in the middle of the XIX century was German Robert Hermann Schomburgk.
He presented a report on the trip to one of the German scientific journals. However, at that time it seemed implausible to everyone. Nobody had seen rivers with colored water, living prehistoric animals and birds, hundreds of plants still unknown to science. The climate of the plateau was also unusual: eternal summer with a strange change of day and night.
In 1937, Venezuelan pilot Juan Angel was flying over the Orinoco river basin and lost his way. He saw a river that was not marked on any map. Following its current, Angel suddenly found that he was not flying over the plain, but in the gorge. On both sides he was surrounded by mountains and couldn’t turn back. Finally, the pilot managed to land on the plateau. The plane was stuck in a swamp, and Angel spent two weeks looking for the way to the nearest Indian settlement. Later he described his impressions in a book that seemed a fantasy.
Juan Angel died in 1956 in an airplane crash, but 10 years later his son Rolland, who believed every word written by his father, was able to organize a large expedition to those lands. Lightning strikes almost daily the stone “table” with an area of almost 900 square kilometers. The expedition discovered the greatest waterfall of the globe, named after the pioneer of the plateau – Angel. The local fauna also turned out to be unusual: in addition to the already known possums, lizards, black toads and frogs, snakes, spiders and many butterflies, the researchers managed to find an unusual animal there. It looked like a big snake with a horse’s head and humps on its back. The length of its body was about 15 meters! But the biggest discovery was the remains of prehistoric animals.
In local caves there were rock paintings depicting unusual animals and creatures.
In the end, it was decided to go back, and there was a new surprise waiting for the brave explorers: they could not get out of the lost world. When the travelers finally managed to get to civilization, it turned out that the families had already buried them. After all, the expedition did not return after the planned several months. They were there for four years! So, the official expeditions weren’t sent there any more. However, from time to time daredevils are trying to enter this lost world, where, as a rule, they find their death: the zone does not like to let its victims go.