Oroima Tepui (Mount Roraima) trekking

[Written for my rec.sport.soccer Usenet Newsgroup]

[OT] [R] Oroima Tepui (Mount Roraima) trekking [OT] [R] ;-)



Copyright of pictures by Mariana Vázquez 2004, 2005.

Down there in the southeast of Venezuela, southwest of Guyana and North of Brazil is the sacred magical mountain of Amerindian people who live in the three countries: taurepans, arekunas and kamarakotos. They are called generically "pemones", but I was told by an arekuna guide that it is because the word "pemon" means in their language "human being"; so as they call "pemon" everybody, the term reverted back to them, so they are now called "pemones".

Tepuis are a particular kind of very ancient mountains which look like fortresses with flat tops, endemic flora and beautiful water falls. One of them is Auyantepui with Angel's falls, one of the highest, if not the highest of the world at some 1.000 meters free fall, from a subterranean river just below the top of the tepui.

The "macizo guayanes" is a primary age region, which is the first area of Venezuela which emerged from water.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote:

"South America is a place I love, it's the grandest, richest, most powerful bit of earth upon this planet............the more you know of that country, the more you would understand that anythin' was possible - anythin'. Now down here in the Mato Grosso or up in this corner where three countries meet, nothin' would surprise me." (Conan Doyle: "The Lost World")

http://lastrefuge.co.uk/tepuis/

Many people come to Venezuela, like one of our fellow rss'ers (name withheld to be discreet), only to know Roraima Tepui (Oroima Tepui in pemon language), without even stopping at Caracas or other cities.

We left Caracas on 20-Dec in a very comfortable Venezuelan-Brazilian bus heading for Manaus (Brazil), with ticket for Santa Elena de Uairén (at the Venezuelan border), but we were dropped at the taurepan hamlet of San Francisco de Yuruani, just on the main road and 70 km from Santa Elena, after a 22 and a half hour ride.

There, Ernestina, the young and pretty wife of our taurepan guide Basilio and one of our porters, was waiting for us in her bicycle.

After having full breakfast at the small food shop of Ernestina´s sister we went up to Paraitepui de Roraima in a modern 4-wheel drive vehicle driven by Juan Pablo, another taurepan, friend of them.

We couldn't even make the whole trip to Paraitepui, because of slippery mud, after the heavy rain of the last days, characteristically of this month. So we were left for a half an hour walk with our backpacks and our bags of food, meant to be carried by our porters.

The nine of us were checked at the office of Parque Nacional Canaima, weighed the loads for the porters and started the long walk.

It is compulsory to have at least one Amerindian guide, and the porters (also Amerindians) could not carry more than 12 kgs plus the 3 kgs they need for them.

The first day (21) it was a 5 and a half hour walk with small ups and downs, but full of mud, crossing several streams, to River Tök camp site (12 km) at 1250 meters altitude.

Next day (22) it was another 5 and a half hours walk on a steady slope going up to the Base Camp site, crossing River Tök and River Kukenan, this one with the help of a rope (another 13 km), at 1700 meters.

The third day (23) we went up in another 5 hours 10 minutes to the top (2800 meters) and then another hour to our "Jacuzzi Hotel". This is the nicest part of the walk. We went through the rain forest, up stepped slopes right to the perpendicular wall of the tepui and climbed by the ramp (60º or more inclination) under the "Pass of the tears", a beautiful high but tiny waterfall. The cold shower gave us more strength to finish the ascent.



The "hotels" are small semi-caves which protect tents from rains and winds from two directions.

We spent the 24th-Dec walking close to the hotel, taking baths in the extremely cold Jacuzzis and admiring the strange panorama, which made most of us think of moon landscapes.

A couple of our group walked with a guide to the triple border point in a 8 hours walk, but the rest of us stayed close to the "hotel" keeping our energy reserves for the long walk back.

There are longer excursions over the top of the tepui, because it is huge. The walk to Lake Gladys and to the Abyss could take more than a day and you have to camp somewhere on the way.

After our Xmas celebration with wine, Spanish nougat, my camping variation of our traditional hallaca (some kind of tamal) and traditional songs (gross mistake, because they say around here that when you sing badly it rains heavy) we had this terrible cold night with a lot of rain.

The next morning (Xmas day) we went down in a 10 hour walk to River Tök campsite, where we could have some beers and real hallacas.

We met small handfuls of people on the ways up and down. Half of them from abroad, particularly Germans, but also Europeans from other countries, US people, a Polish-Canadian couple, Brazilians, etc.

For instance on the River Tök and Base Camp sites, there could be some 25 people altogether, including the nine of us, guides and porters.

On the top we just met a German couple and we could see people in "hotels" from the distance.

There was a TV troupe from abroad at the Base camp and at the top, annoying people in a chopper :-/

That was my only disappointment: after so many hours walking, get up there just to be annoyed by helicopter noise...

Anyway, the last day of walk, with our muscles exhausted and full of cramps, we made it in a 4 hour walk to Paraitepui, to real cold beers and to the happiness of having accomplished a beautiful trekking to this lost world.

That's why I put an [R] for Result in the subject ;-)

That's how I spent my Xmas. Hope all of you have had a nice Xmas too.

JV