The pilot set his plane down atop Auyan-tepui in 1937, he was looking to find gold, not to have his name immortalized forever by a waterfall. Angel, a former WW1 fighter pilot turned Barnstormer, with Charles Lindbergh’s Flying Circus, turned hard-drinking adventurer, had found gold 13 years before atop a tepui somewhere in the jungles of southeastern Venezuela. The problem was, he could never find the mountain again, though he spent the rest of his life trying.
Auyan, at 700 square kms, is the largest of the tepuis. Flattopped, with vertical sides, these sandstone towers rise several thousand feet above the jungle floor in the Guyana area of Venezuela. Tepuis are large enough and tall enough to support their own ecosystems, which are usually quite different from the steamy jungles below. However, they are still quite wet, receiving daily rainfall during the wet season from April through November. All this water finds its way to the edge of the plateaus, resulting in many spectacular waterfalls cascading down vertical walls.
