SALTO ANGEL – THE FLIGHT OF THE WATERFALL
Every semi-intelligent participant in the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” will apparently assume that the highest waterfall in the world–Salto Angel in Spanish, Angel Falls in English–is named after the celestial guardian of Good, the Angel. However, unlike the devilish megapolis Los Angelis–or the City of the Angelеs–in California, the name of the extraordinarily spectacular natural phenomenon in Venezuela has nothing to do with these God-anointed creatures. Quite the contrary, the discoverer and godfather of this fairy of flying waters, the American Jimmie Angel, was anything but an angel.
The biography of this aviator and adventurer born in the last year of the 19th century, as well as the circumstances of the discovery of Salto Angel, seem borrowed from a first-class Hollywood scenario. The similarities to Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush for example are striking.
Addicted to adrenaline in unlimited doses and satisfying this addiction, Jimmie Angel landed one day in 1922 in Panama City–a retreat for rebels and freethinkers of any kind. Sitting in a bar one evening he was joined for a glass of Caribbean rum by an elderly man with a weather-beaten face and feverish eyes. “They say you can land an airplane on a ten-cent coin.” Jimmie was untouched by the stranger’s compliment but couldn’t remain indifferent to what his ears heard next. For me it was also very difficult to keep mental neutrality/balance/remain calm when watching a film about the Salto Angel waterfall with its impossible vertical line and its ethereal column of water that seems to fly off the clouds. That’s why when the opportunity arose I didn’t hesitate and bought a ticket to South America.
To reach the heart of Venezuela in those days Jimmie Angel had to buy a plane. The white-haired gentleman who had interrupted his evening drink turned out to be a professional gold-digger from Alaska. He declared loud enough for everybody to hear that he knew the location of a mountain of gold hidden in the jungle at the border between Venezuela and Brazil. He asked whether Jimmie would agree to take him there by air and how much it would cost. The young aviator pursed his lips but being accustomed to the publican’s tall stories didn’t break the rules of the game. “Five thousand dollars and I am all yours”. This was a fabulous price at that time and everybody would have simply laughed at it. However, the gold-digger with the gnarly name McCracken imperturbably presented a wad of cash and paid straight away the wanted fee. My negotiations with Walter, who organized the transport to Salto Angel, were not so easy and required some serious bargaining. Even today when easy air services “minimize” the geography, the highest waterfall on Earth is still one of the sights in South America very difficult to access. No roads are built to the Canaima National Park and the only way to reach it is either by air, or by boat sailing upstream on the Rio Caroni.
We overnight in Ciudad Bolivar, a nice city on the Orinoco river, and the next morning the two of us, me and Elena, board a five-seat Cessna. It coughs unhealthily when started up but then it overcomes gravity and takes us alongover the woody sea of jungle. Jimmie Angel and McCracken also took off from Ciudad Bolivar steering south. For them as well as for us the monotony of the green carpet beneath was disrupted by the appearance of some unusual geological formations. The sharp outlines of rocky flat-topped pyramids emerge. Wreathed in mist like smoking volcanoes, they cover an area of several square kilometers each and are distinguished by vertical rusty-red walls up to a hundred meters high. The Indians of the indigenous tribe Pemon call them tepui. These gigantic volcanic formations exist only here—in Southeast Venezuela and in West Guyana. The table-top of most of them is covered with black sandstone or with grassy marshes that make the landing of an aircraft very difficult and dangerous.
After a one-hour flight, our modern Cessna lands without problems on the short concrete runway at Canaima, an Indian tourist settlement on the shores of the lagoon of the same name. Through four big waterfalls, the Rio Carao empties its yellowish waters into a natural lake and then, making another jump down by means of Salto Sapo, flows into Rio Caroni. It’s obvious that we have landed in the land of the waterfalls, but we still have a long way to go before we reach the foot of Salto Angel reigning over them all.
The flight of Jimmie Angel and McCracken in the search of yet another South American Eldorado lasted longer. After several unsuccessful attempts to land, the plane approached an isolated tepui and the gold-digger resolutely ordered the pilot to land. Jimmie Angel lived up to his reputation and managed to ground the airplane on a comparatively even strip of rock. And when they got off, they were met by the most fantastic sight in the world. Tons of gold ore shimmered all around under the equatorial sun. Driven mad by the discovery, the two men started filling the plane with gold. But they didn’t have much time because they had to return to Ciudad Bolivar by daylight. The navigation techniques of the time were too primitive to allow flying in the dark. Feeling like millionaires, Angel and McCracken spent the night in their hammocks near Rio Orinoco.
Without having become suddenly wealthy, but excited about what was awaiting us the next day, we take shelter for the night on Anatoly Island in the lagoon opposite the rumbling water curtain of the Echa waterfall. On the next morning, together with our Indian guide Luis and some more foreigners, we climb above the Upaita waterfalls where we set off upstream on the Rio Carrao in a wooden motor boat—long as a pirogue. In the beginning the sailing is pleasant; we move fast and the view of the tepui rising around is smashing. In about two hours, however, we leave the spacious quiet waters of Rio Carrao and start climbing the steep narrow bed of Rio Churun, cut up by swift currents. The fight with the turbulent shallow waters of the river lasts four hours. The outboard motor is exhausted in the effort to push the boat upstream, and listening to its hysterical shrieks I dread the thought that the screw could block, the current would take us back to where we started and we wouldn’t be able reach Salto Angel. Luckily and to the credit of Suzuki, the motor holds out against the long hours of torture.
The luck of Jimmy Angel and McCracken, though, was short-lived. The old gold-digger fell ill with yellow fever and died, taking the secret location of the gold deposit to his grave. The young pilot, of course knew its whereabouts–however, only roughly–which turned out not to be enough. Until the end of his life in 1956, more than thirty years after the discovery, Jimmy Angel kept tirelessly looking for the lost treasure. He didn’t succeed in finding it, but he found another natural wonder—the king of waterfalls, Salto Angel.
In 1935, on one of his gold-digging missions, the fearless pilot together with his wife and a friend undertook a risky landing on Ayuntepui, the largest and highest mountain in the surroundings. But his plane sank hopelessly in the marshland. While looking for a way out, Jimmie Angel came upon a high-water stream that after a while jumped into a gaping abyss from a towering height. Nobody remembered ever seeing such a high waterfall in this area. After the adventurers managed to escape unscathed from the trap of the jungle, they announced their discovery to the world. The geographic expedition that followed some time later ascertained that the waters of Salto Angel fly off from a height of more than a thousand meters, making it the tallest waterfall on the planet (the modern measuring registers a length of 979 meters, 807 of which is an uninterrupted plumb-line drop).
We manage to reach the foot of Salto Angel and see it with our own eyes only late in the afternoon. The stream of falling water looks totally weightless in the graphic evening light. It is as if in free fall from such an immense height gravity is unable to enforce its will and the water, bereft of weight, just flies. However, the exaltation doesn’t last long. On getting nearer to the earth gravity again gets the upper hand and the powdered waters–dispersed like a veil–of Salto Angel sink to the bottom of the dark cliff. We spend the night in hammocks on the bank of Rio Churun, besieged by swarms of equatorial insects. In the light of the new day Salto Angel shows us its other face. It is gay and sparkling, and the vertical wall is picturesquely coloured. The waters, no longer threatening as in the evening, fly somehow tenderly and innocently through the abyss. It is as if a flock of angels comes from the sky.
The falling water has a hypnotizing effect on the eyes just like fire has. Staring at the incessant flow of Salto Angel, I imagine the aeronautic spirit of its discoverer dwelling here in an eternal flight amidst the vertical world of his discovery.
In keeping with his wishes, the heirs of Jimmie Angel scattered his ashes from the top of the waterfall.