A table mountain where Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela meet, 2,810 metres at the southern rim, with cliffs 400 to 1,000 metres tall running right round it. The summit is over 10 km long and up to 5 wide, a pseudo-karst plateau scoured by constant rain that leaches the ground almost sterile. The rock is Proterozoic sandstone, 1.7 to 2 billion years old and about 98 percent silica, sitting on granite and gneiss and once buried under Mesozoic layers that have long since eroded away. Cut off on top, it grew its own species: the Roraima toad, the Roraima climbing mouse, and pitcher plants and sundews that eat insects because the soil gives them nothing. Everard im Thurn made the first ascent in December 1884 and his account is what gave Conan Doyle The Lost World. The southwestern route needs no technical gear and takes three to five days, with a quota of 200 people a month.
Brazil / Guyana / Venezuela border
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