Canaima National Park is a country of table mountains: sheer-walled blocks of sandstone almost two billion years old, rising straight out of the jungle with flat summits usually lost in cloud. The Pemón call them tepuis, houses of the gods. There are more than a hundred of them across some 30,000 square kilometres of southeastern Venezuela, an area the size of Belgium. Mount Roraima, the best known, gave Arthur Conan Doyle the setting for The Lost World in 1912. Auyán-tepui, the largest, drops Angel Falls off its rim — 807 metres of uninterrupted fall, the tallest on Earth, and so tall that the water breaks into mist before it lands. Between the tepuis the land is rolling golden grassland, the Gran Sabana, with rivers stained wine-red by tannins washed out of the forest.
At the park's heart lies Canaima Lagoon, deep red water lapping against beaches of pink sand, with a row of waterfalls pouring in along one side. A ledge runs behind the curtain of Salto El Sapo, so you walk through the roar and look out at the lagoon through gaps in the falling water. Giant anteaters forage the grassland, and morning mist pools between solitary tepuis. No road reaches any of it: you fly into Canaima village by small plane and continue by curiara, a Pemón dugout canoe. The river trip to the base of Angel Falls runs only from about June to November, when rains lift the water enough for the boats. Nights in the village are dark and loud with frogs, and there is no phone signal anywhere in the park. Most governments now advise against travel to Venezuela, so the few who come arrive on organised expeditions led by Pemón guides.