Discovering a lost world on Mount Roraima

21.07.2023 - 07:55 / roughguides.com / Kiki Deere

In the mysterious setting of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Kiki Deere explores one of the world’s most unusual landscapes.

The customs procedures take less time than I anticipate as I cross onto Venezuelan soil from Brazil and drive towards what is undoubtedly one of the world’s most incredible natural sights. My shared taxi from Roraima is also, ironically, cheaper than taking a bus — in Venezuela petrol is so cheap (at about US$1 for a full tank, it costs less than water) that scores of Brazilian taxis are eager to cross the border to stock up on discount fuel. We bump our way along a potholed road and soon reach the crumbling border town of Santa Elena de Uairén, where the driver skids to a halt outside my guesthouse, causing a cloud of dust to rise in the air.

I am here to explore the Canaima National Park, home to some awe-inspiring table top mountains that are among the oldest geological formations in the world, dating back over 1.6 billion years. These structures are also known as tepuis, which in Native American Pemón language means “house of the Gods”. The indigenous Pemón people honour the tepuis, believing them to be inhabited by deities.

About 200 million years ago, at the time of the supercontinent Gondwanaland when South America and West Africa were joined, the summits of the tepuis were connected. When the continents eventually drifted apart disruptions broke up a gargantuan massif, forming individual tepuis that over time grew smaller, some crumbling away. It is the remnants of these sandstone plateaus that can be seen today in the Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that occupies over 30,000 square kilometres and is home to over half of the area’s tepuis.

We traverse the large dry plains of the Gran Sabana, or Great Savannah, where jagged structures jut out of the earth, occasionally stopping for a photographic memento. And suddenly there it is, rising precipitously along the border of Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana: the awe-inspiring Mount Roraima, the highest of the tepui range reaching 2810m and measuring eight kilometres across. This giant tabletop mountain, featuring 400-metre-high sheer cliffs, stands in isolation, its summit often enveloped in clouds of mist.

With heavy rainfall year round, the top of this bleak windswept plateau is one of the wettest places on earth, and, like much of the area, home to extraordinary endemic flora and fauna. Over time, dozens of species of plants have adapted to the semi-sterile soil of Mount Roraima’s plateau by supplementing their diet with the flesh of insects. The pretty red leaves of the carnivorous sundew attract insects that soon become trapped by the plant’s sticky tentacles, which wrap themselves around the little