Trekking up Roraima Tepui

I just spent 6 days trekking in National Park Canaima. My trek took me up to the top of Mount Roraima. A big fat and flat table top mountain otherwise known as Tepuis. Mount Roraima is the highest of the Tepuis in Venezuela, at 2810 metres.

This is my favorite trek in South America so far. The first 2 days took us through grassy plains, towards Roraima's base camp.

On the left you have Mount Kukenan, and on the right is Mount Roraima.

Mount Kukenan, as taken at sunrise on the right, is known as the evil twin. It has been told that back in the days, the native people here, known as Pemon, would rather climb up Kukenan and throw themselves off rather then falling to enemy hands. Nowadays there are no tours that heads up there as no native people would ever lead tourist up. I suspect the real reason is that it is much harder to climb then Mount Roraima!

And on day 3 we climb up the mountain. It was a slippery afair, but less scary then I thought. We cross the famous Tears Crossing, basically a series of waterfall which falls over us. And then, we reach the top after 4 hours of effort.

Up on top of Roraima it is all about rocks. Re-incarnated in various formations. All in very interesting shapes and sizes. There are also amazing crystal to be found at many areas on Roraima. These rocks you see are vary old, older then the Himalayas, the Alps and the Andes combined! The top is also pretty wet, therefore there are more plant life then I thought. Plus some insect and small animals.

The Roraima frogs are the most interesting. They are very tiny, about the size of my finger nail. They have a black body and a yellow belly underneath. These frogs do not hop like their cousins, instead they walk on all fours! Very trippy!

The group at Roraima
Originally uploaded by benwoo

We did not have the best weather during the trek over the 6 days trek. At times our tents were flooded and we saw plenty of rain and fog.

So at times there was no view on top of the mountain at all! But I didn't mind, as running around and examining the rocks themselves was interesting enough.

We finally made our decent on day 5, and spent the next 2 days walking back out to civilization!

I had a pretty cool group too. From the left they are: Penny (Aus), Richard (Aus), Sarah (Eng), Barna (Hun), Fran (Eng), Camilla (Swe), Ryo (Jap) and yours truely!

We made our tour with Mystic tour, run by Roberto. And paid 770 Bolivars for the fantastic trek.