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| | | | Up into The Lost World, but where was Raquel?
From the Mail on Sunday
There are only a few places on Earth where landscape and weather conspire to create the perfect mystery. Mount Roraima in south-eastern Venezuela is one of them. For days on end, the summit of this massive table mountain can be hidden by cloud. Towering cliffs 1,500ft high guard its secrets from the outside world.
One can't help but wonder what's up there on the plateau as big as the Isle of Arran - and neither could the scientists of Victorian England. Fresh from their studies of Darwin, they speculated that something from an earlier age might survive up in the swirling mists. Which is why, today, Roraima is more familiar to us as Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World.
At a time when interest in dinosaurs is at a Spielberg-induced high, it is odd that few people realise Mount Roraima provided the inspiration for the granddaddy of all dinosaur epics. The Lost World was inspired by the ascent of Roraima in 1884 by two naturalists, Everard Im Thurn and Harry Perkins. They spent just two hours on the summit - enough to scotch rumours of a South American Jurassic Park, but not enough to quell Conan Doyle's imagination.
On the map of Venezuela, Roraima lies right on the country's south eastern borders with Brazil and Guyana. It's an area called the Grand Sabana - a remote, high plain dotted with pockets of rainforest. Dominating this desolate landscape are the tepuis - more than 100 flat-topped mountains, the remains of an ancient plateau.
These weirdly eroded pedestals litter the horizon. They are islands in the sky ringed by sheer cliffs and steep, forest-covered scree slopes. Gazing at them for the first time, I experienced something akin to deja vu. Had I seen this landscape before, perhaps in some primordial memory stored deep in my DNA? Either that or watching Raquel Welch in 'One Million Years BC'.
Perkins and Im Thurn took two months to climb Roraima. Today it's a little easier to reach from Caracas by either land or air. The group I travelled with drove for three days from the capital, crossing the Orinoco and passing into increasingly unpopulated country on the highway built in 1972.
At the small Indian settlement of San Francisco, high on the Grand Sabana, we transferred to four-wheel-drive trucks for an hour's bone-shaking ride to the hill village of Paraytepuy. This is where the trail to Roraima begins. We camped by the village soccer pitch and drank a last beer while shadows crept up Roraima's forested flanks, the setting sun turning its cliffs amber, then rose pink.
Travel guide: Venezuela
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| | | | Staring at the Wall
The 16-mile hike from the village to Roraima's giant cliffs took two days. Intense heat and steep gradients restricted our pace to a slow trudge. On the second afternoon we camped just two miles from the cliff - or the Wall as the locals call it.
From the shade of my tent, I stared at the sheer rock face. At this proximity, the mountain was overwhelming. It loomed over the campsite, clouds rolling off its summit like ocean breakers. My only comfort was a sighting of the Ledge: a line of trees running up across the cliff face at an angle of 30 degrees. This was the route taken by the expedition of 1884; it was ours, too.
Leaving camp the following morning with six Indian porters and a guide, we began the two-mile scramble up a steep slope through rainforest to the foot of the Wall. It took two hours - two hours of breathless, sweaty misery before the sound of a waterfall pierced the forest gloom. Abruptly there were no more trees ahead, only a cool, moss-covered rockface rising vertically. I craned my neck so far back it felt in danger of snapping.
From the Wall, the trail ran along a ledge so wide I had no sense of the enormous drop somewhere over to my left. Here climbing was easier - not so steep. Besides, I had been reinvigorated by the knowledge the worst was over. It was an hour later, after a final undignified scramble, that I clambered through the small canyon called the Door - the gateway to Roraima's summit.
Elation and relief overwhelmed me. Breathless from altitude, my legs reduced to jelly, I slumped on to the flattest boulder within staggering distance and took my first proper look at the Lost World. Unlike the tropical jungle imagined by Conan Doyle, Roraima's summit is a barren moonscape of black rock. Aeons of erosion by wind and rain have created a landscape like the dream of an insane sculptor. It's Henry Moore on acid, the surreal rock architecture of a Road Runner cartoon brought to life.
The scene is dominated by huge rock tors similar to those on Dartmoor. All around them are boulders scattered like a child's building bricks. Some balance perilously, others have been carved into arches and bridges, more stacked like cairns. Between the tors are flatter areas filled by rock pools and loosely anchored rafts of vegetation: insectivorous sundews and pitcher plants, stegolepis with its sharp leaves like a fan of green daggers.
Roraima's flora is tough: it has to be to survive days of scorching sun and nights cold enough to force visitors into their fleeces and thermals. Apart from birds and insects, the only animal to eke a living here is the tiny black Roraima toad.
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| | | | Camping on top of the world
With no soil to speak of and often extreme weather conditions, camping is a tricky business. From the Door, we hopped from rock to rock for 40 minutes to reach a 'hotel' - one of a number of protective rock overhangs beneath which tents can be pitched.
It's on the summit that an Indian guide becomes invaluable: they know the 'hotels' and the scuffed rocks marking a trail. It's easy to get lost in such an alien landscape where clouds drift through the valleys like moorland fogs. It can also be dangerous: the plateau is crisscrossed by deep ravines.
Having pitched camp, we ventured to the Wall - the edge of Roraima. Here, the world falls away in a sheer drop of Grand Canyon proportions. One by one, we crawled on our stomachs to the edge and peered over the heart-stopping precipice. It felt incredibly unsafe, as though the mountain were tipping you over. Three years ago, a German tourist fell to his death from the same spot while trying to take a photograph looking straight down.
The wind had dropped, there were no birds - just a hissing in my ears. I found a rock pool, stripped naked, squatted down and washed myself in its warm water. Around me was nothing but rocky wilderness. I must have looked like something out of the Stone Age.
That night as we gathered at the Wall to watch sunset, a cold wind sprang up behind us. In the next valley to our right, a huge plume of cloud curled off the summit like a waterfall, drifting lazily out into space. For me, the most memorable experience on Roraima was simply being alone - something that's quite easy bearing in mind there are only 20 or 30 people on the summit at any one time.
Roraima is without doubt a unique experience. While fitness and mobility limit those able to make the climb, it is possible to visit the summit by helicopter from the town of Santa Elena 50 miles to the south. But for the real Roraima experience, it's got to be on foot.
Two days after our ascent, we returned to the Door and began the long walk from the Lost World back to civilisation. And although it's only 20 miles, it is a long walk - at least 500 million years.
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