The Lost World - Mount Roraima

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Mount Roraima

 

Mount Roraima is one the most mysterious and alluring mountains in the world. An enormous flat-topped mesa, its sheer cliffs rise from one of the most remote areas of the Amazon rain forest. It is entirely appropriate that Conan Doyle used Roraima as the inspiration for the novel Lost World, a tale of modern dinosaurs.

The mountain is a vast heart-shaped plateau, with the area of the rolling summit area about 50 sq.km or 20 sq. miles. It lies in three countries, but Venezuela controls over 80% of the summit, with Brazil and Guyana owning much smaller slivers. The highest point on the massif, a rock called the "Maverick Stone", is in Venezuela, near the southwestern side of the plateau. Several kilometers northeast from this is the Triple-Country Point, a survey monument where the three nations meet.

In these days of popular adventure tourism, the ascent has become a relatively easy trek of about three to five days. There is a ramp on the southwest side of the mountain's mostly sheer cliffs that allows a non-technical route to the summit plateau, very close to the Maverick Stone. The start point for these trips is Santa Elena, Venezuela, and several tour companies arrange them, using native guides and porters.

Highlights from the top of Roraima includes the views from The Window, Maverick (highest peak), the Jazucci, underground caves, the amazon jungle, the neighbouring countries of Guyana and Brazil, and the crystal valley.

 

Source: Video YouTube

 

Beautiful World - The Mind-Blowing Mount Roraima

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Should add that the tabletop mountains of the Roraima plateau are considered some of the oldest geological formations on Earth, dating back to some two billion years ago in the Precambrian. While Arthur Conan Doyle populated the tepui Roraima with dinosaurs, strange vegetation and animals in his book, The Lost World, based on the accounts of British explorers Everard IM Thum and Harry Perkins who were the first Europeans to ascend Mount Roraima in 1884, subsequent explorations and modern day climbers and trekkers could find no dinosaur fossils or traces of prehistoric life on the top of the tepui.