I guess its one of the cannot miss sights of Venezuela so I booked myself a tour. If nothing else it got me out of Ciudad Bolivar! Canaima National Park is only accessible by flight (or maybe a VERY long boat journey). In my case, we drove for 3 hours to the small airfield at La Paragua and then caught a 20 minute flight to the park. A bit of a blunder on behalf of the tour operator as our group was of 6 people and the aircraft would only fit 4 (plus the pilot and some food supplies). This caused us a little delay in beginning the onward trip as the pilot had to make a return flight to collect the rest of our party.

The Plane

Once we were all in Canaima, the journey began, it was to be 3 days by motorised canoe with two nights spent at different camps. Canaima (the 'village') is set on a beautiful lagoon with accompaying palm trees and waterfalls.

A little cramped!

These falls were to be our first stop, with a chance to walk behind Hacha falls. Followed by three hours boat travel to the first camp. Unfortunately the delayed start meant that the last 30-40 minutes of the first leg were completed in the dark. What I hadn't been expecting was the degree of rapids we would have to deal with, in a rather unstable canoe, with low water (lots of protruding rocks) and in the dark! Still full credit to the boatman (who must have been navigating using 'the force'), we arrived at camp 1 safely after an exciting first leg.

Our Transport

After a night in a hammock we were up and off on day two with greater rapids to contend with. At least we had daylight on our side this time! Late morning brought us to camp 2 where we would spend our second night. The camp was only an hours walk from the Angel Falls. As we arrived at the camp we had our first sight of Angel Falls, which was unfortunately covered in clouds!!

I'm VERY pleased to report that the clouds were short lived and it wasn't too long before the blue skies broke through to give great views of Angel Falls. I took plenty of photos which i've already uploaded to the Venezuela Gallery. However here's a few for the blog: