Canaima

Why Avensa, once Venezuela’s main domestic airline, chose this name for what they called a ‘campamento’, puzzles me against my anti-superstitious will. I presume the choice was inspired by Romulo Gallegos’ novel, Canaima, and that the alliteration played a role too. That does not change the fact that it is the name of the indigenous mythology’s evil spirit: an evanescent creature that swoops down from the sky like a blackish bird of prey and leaves nothing but death behind in its shadowy wake. I remember a Yek’wana woman telling us about Canaima on a trip up the Caura River: that she had seen it coming down upon her village preceding a relative’s death, and that a place that had been visited needs to be abandoned. “Does that mean”, I asked my fellow travelers whose Spanish was native, “that every time someone dies, they have to move to another place?” They hadn’t gotten that part of the story either, however. (Maybe, I’m thinking now, not every death is due to Canaima.)

The choice of location, on the other hand, was perfect: maybe the most beautiful spot on earth, if one judges according to the occurrence of idyllic platitudes and the overall scenic composition into which they are fused. Everything is there: amber-colored waterfalls that tumble into a wide lagoon of clear but near-black water, tapering out to dark-red tones at the pink-sanded edges, patches of not-yet cut-down rainforest, and in the misty background, the mysterious shapes of the checkered, flat-topped sandstone mountains called tepuis. Not to forget the famous three palm trees, with their wet feet, that appear on nearly every travel guide cover and tourism bureau poster of Venezuela. Granted, the guacamayas, toucans and other birds of paradise have abandoned the place owing to the (relatively unobtrusive but nonetheless constant) noise of landing airplanes and rattling safari trucks. But they were probably still there in the beginning.

Why did I mention my anti-superstitious predisposition? Because my health record on visits to Canaima has always been cause for concern, to an extent that I might have easily believed the name to be premonitory. During my first stay, in August 1994, the long-haired wildwestish guide that took us to Salto el Sapo managed to give my mom (I was 15 then and with my parents) the shock of her life by telling her that I was going to die. Quite obviously I didn’t, but it took three weeks altogether for me to recover from an amoebic dysentery sufficiently to allow me to return. (A fair amount of that time was spent trying to discover the right diagnosis. Nowadays, whenever I am traveling in a tropical country and feel diarrheatically indisposed, I ask the doctor: “And you’re absolutely sure it’s not amoebic dysentery?”)

The second time (yes, I did ask), it was not quite as amoebic, and my recovery took only half as long. By then (in 2005), the medical facilities in Canaima itself were actually quite a bit better, despite the obvious decline of the ‘Campamento’ (Avensa, I believe, doesn’t even exist anymore), and a doctor infused me with various bottles of antibiotics and anti-vomits right on the spot.

The waterfalls of the Carrao River, stretching for maybe a mile along the rim of the Canaima lagoon, are one of the main attractions. From the pink beach near the actual ‘Campamento’, motorized curiaras (dugouts) take the tourists to a spray-dripping and wave-shaken close-up of the falls of Ucaima, Golondrina and Hacha and to a quiet bay on Anatoly Island in the middle of the river. Pink sands here too, a couple of shrubs, and a feeling of remoteness and solitude – until one penetrates the shrubs and finds the signs prohibiting the roaming without guide and the leaving of the relatively well-maintained paths. Those lead to the waterfalls Sapo and Sapito, which hide on the other side of the island. Sapo has delighted tourists ever since Tomas Bernal, one of the earlier guides in this spot (he maintained a camp right on the island but drowned in an accident on the lagoon in 2004), discovered and cleared a path that leads behind the thundering wall of water to the other side of the falls.

A longer curiara-trip starts at the outflow of the lagoon and leads to the waterfalls Yuri and Yuri-lu, a couple of miles downriver. Not as spectacular as the Canaima falls (only a couple of meters high), the beauty of the scene lies more in its untouchedness and remoteness. The jungle is thicker here, not camp, no houses, and only a narrow path betrays the occasional presence of men. Yuri-lu is nothing but a small cascade of a little stream nearby (in Venezuela, taking showers in waterfalls in one of the main tourist activities, and this is an ideal one for that), but it illustrates an interesting point: unlike the Carrao, a tropical blackwater river, it is a clearwater stream without any tannin-derived color. The third type of tropical rivers cannot be found around here: the silt-laden whitewaters (not the rafting and kayaking ones) such as the Orinoco and Amazon.

Yet, none of the above is the main lure that draws visitors to Canaima. Venezuela’s only attraction of global fame can be found about a hundred kilometers upriver, hidden inside a canyon as grand and beautiful as the one in Arizona (and on top adorned by lush rainforests instead of dry desert shrubs): Salto Angel, the world’s highest waterfall. Getting there requires another curiara journey, usually involving an annoying non-local guide and two overnight stays in somewhat large and charmless hammock camps with corrugated-iron roofs. The curiaras take off just above the Canaima waterfalls (often the Sapo trip is prepended to the Angel itinerary, and the curiara waits atop the fall) and make a first stop at the Mayupa rapids, where passengers have to walk under a burning sun while the lightened boat gushes through the splashing waters. (More expensive tours, such as those organized by Jungle Rudi, drive the excursionists in noisy and uncomfortable trucks – at the expense of the fragile savannah grass cover, which from the air looks like streaked by a slave-driver’s whip in this spot.) Progressing further upstream, the rainforest takes over the savannah, and the cliffs of Auyántepui, the biggest of Venezuela’s table-top mountains, draw closer, towering a thousand meters above the forested slopes. The walls recede and advance towards the river, thrown into folds like a giant dragon’s tail. The jagged upper edge of the wall, sometimes breaking up into a thousand separate columns of different heights, reinforces the dragon-spine impression.

Just when you think the scenery could not be more beautiful, the boat heads away from the main river up the Churún, the stream that carved Auyántepui’s grand canyon. Above the junction watches the split-in-the-middle table-top of Wei Tepui, which stages delightful appearances and retreats behind a jungle-green curtain as the boat winds its way up the intestinally wiggled stream. Cloudy veils float across the scene and transport it beyond earthly graspability. But let me switch from the general case to the particular once more: in which the curiara gets stuck on rocks every second river bend, due to low flow. When I arrived in Canaima, not yet sick but well on the way, the rivers were full and juicy, and Salto Angel a powerful torrent shooting out of Auyán’s sandstone wall (I saw it from the plane that took me to Kavac, a small village on the other side of the mountain). While I was recovering in Caracas, it didn’t rain, the rivers dried up, Salto Angel dwindled to a small silver band dangling from the sky. And the annoying guide threatened us not to take any photos because we could be shouted at any minute, to get out of the boat into the water, and push. Push across the rapids, or pull. It was fun, to some extent. But eventually it gets exhausting, and you hope at every bend that it is the one that will finally afford you the view on it, the fall, el salto.

There are two areas where the tour operators have set up their concrete-and-corrugated-iron camps: around the confluence of the Carrao and Ahonda rivers (in vicinity of Isla la Orchidea in the Carrao), and around Isla Ratoncito at the base of Angel Falls. The Ahonda River is Churún’s smaller brother, another canyon carved into the Auyán plateau. Some companies have come and gone, and in general there is a lot more competition nowadays than there used to be, to the tourist’s benefit. The same is true for Canaima itself: there were times when the only place to stay was Avensa’s campamento, and not having a voucher meant difficulties getting on the plane in Caracas already. Or, to be fair, Jungle Rudi’s, which was actually the first camp on the spot and has been the most expensive one up to the present day (in both camps, Avensa’s and Jungle Rudi’s, you’ll pay hundreds of dollars for one night’s stay). It even sports its own smaller landing strip above the waterfalls.

In 1994, when I visited for the first time, there existed alternatives to the Avensa camp, both of the hammocky and slightly more luxurious (bedded) variety. But Avensa still had a strong hold on the business, and most of the flights were operated from Caracas with big Boeing jets. By 2005, the variety of available accommodation had increased considerably, and even more to my delight, I was able to find a place to stay without booking in advance, upon my completely unpredictable arrival in Canaima (I actually wanted to get to Kavac, the place on the other side of the mountain; however, the bush pilots’ flight plans made the route via Canaima seem the quickest and most economic alternative). The place was completely new, right next to the landing strip, charming, and I was the only guest. (It’s called Posada Morichal, and I recommend it heartily). Also, the center of gravity for flights to and tours from Canaima has shifted completely towards Ciudad Bolivar, the capital of the country’s interior (only politically – in terms of real-life importance Puerto Ordaz seems far more weighty). Big jets don’t land in Canaima any longer; the vast majority of tourists arrive in 5-seated Cessnas. Actually a nice development, since it also seems to have brought an overall reduction in the number of visitors (thanks to Chavez, of course; for a couple of years, it seems, there was almost nothing happening in the way of tourism).

What I actually wanted to do when I passed through Canaima in 2005 (the complete story will hopefully appear here sometime soon): climb Auyántepui, from Kavac, the small village I cursorily mentioned a couple of times. Kavac, by the way, is another popular trip (by plane) from Canaima. It features a slot canyon reminiscent of those of the American Southwest, but with water. In fact, with a thundering waterfall at its end, sending ultrasonic droplets like needles through the chasm and into your face while you’re trying to swim up the stream. In any case, that’s where I got sick that year: trying to climb the mountain. You can visit Salto Angel from that side of the mountain too: descending the Carrao river rather than ascending it, and ending the journey in Canaima. This excursion is usually lead by Pemones, the native inhabitants of the area, and judging from my experience: they are much nicer guides than those annoying ones in Canaima.