La Gran Sabana

The great green covers you like a speck of dust drifting in the atmosphere of some enormous living carpet, filled with every possible kind of life form. Your soft flesh and nighttime blindness make you one of the least prepared critters in the jungle, so you cower in the shadows hoping that the ever-present predators lurking about do not detect your sweet smell in the air, lest you become a midnight snack or afternoon appetizer, and your skull a plaything for some young yawning raptor. The Gran Sabana (English: The Great Savanna) is an important natural attraction in Venezuela, located in the south of Bolívar State on the Venezuelan-Brazilian border, approximately 1,400 km from Caracas. The Gran Sabana lies on a plateau with a mean altitude of 1,000 meters above sea level and is dotted with huge table-top mountains called tepuis, which rise dramatically from the surrounding plains. The tallest of the tepuis is Mount Roraima at 2,810 meters above sea level. Mount Roraima also marks the triple border point for Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana. It is inhabited by several indigenous groups, including the Pemon, who are the most numerous. Canaima National Park, which was created by a decree on the 12th of June, 1962, encompasses most of the Gran Sabana but the areas do not exactly match. In 1975 the Canaima National Park was extended from the original 10,000 km² to 30,000 km², making it the sixth largest national park in the world. The main attractions for visitors to the region are Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, Mount Roraima, the mountain which inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World, and the many other mountains and waterfalls.