Angel Falls

A 807 metre single drop, and the plane that found it sat on top for 33 years

Water slides off the rim of Auyán-tepui, a sandstone table mountain in Venezuela's Canaima National Park, and falls 979 metres to the forest. Most of that height is a single free plunge of 807 metres; the rest is about 400 metres of sloped cascade and rapids below the drop, then a last plunge of some 30 metres. By that count Angel Falls is the tallest uninterrupted waterfall on Earth, although the measurements have never been revisited and South Africa's Tugela Falls still has backers for the overall title. Both figures were taken from a long way off.

The Pemon name is Kerepakupai Vená, waterfall of the deepest place. Auyán-tepui was considered a dangerous place and the Pemon did not go up it.

The English name belongs to Jimmie Angel, a Missouri-born bush pilot looking for a valuable bed of ore. He flew past the falls on 16 November 1933 and came back on 9 October 1937 to land his Flamingo monoplane, El Río Caroní, on the summit. The wheels sank into the marsh. Angel, his wife Marie and two companions walked off the mountain down its gentler back slope, a trek of 11 days, and the story of it put his name on the falls. Salto del Ángel first appeared on a Venezuelan government map in December 1939. The plane stayed on the tepui for 33 years until a helicopter lifted it out; restored, it now stands outside the airport at Ciudad Bolívar. Angel's ashes were scattered over the falls in July 1960.

The Latvian explorer Aleksandrs Laime reached the base alone in 1946, cleared the trail still used to the viewpoint named for him, Mirador Laime, and later reached Angel's plane. The official height comes from a 1949 survey by an expedition financed by the American journalist Ruth Robertson. Climbers first topped the cliff face on 13 January 1971 after nine and a half days on the wall.

In 2009 Hugo Chávez said on his weekly television show that the falls should carry the indigenous name, then said he would not decree the change.

Getting there takes a flight into Canaima camp and a river trip with Pemon guides, run from June to December when the water is deep enough. From December to March the falls carry less water.