The Living Edens "TEPUIS" Behind The Scenes ...The STORY ..Page 11 of 13

The Making of the Tepuis Film : "The Living Edens : The Lost World"
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THE STORY


In 1985, we carried out an expedition to Autana-tepui, arriving on the summit by skydiving out of an old DC3. While we were there, we abseiled for almost 800 feet down the wall of Autana to reach the caves. The scale of the place was unbelievable - the ledge outside the cave had seemed tiny from the plane but was actually covered by trees and enormous boulders. And the cave itself was vast, with a central chamber in the heart of the mountain reminiscent of a cathedral dome. We found ancient water marks on the walls of tunnels, and beds of pebbles, polished in ancient times by the action of water.

Cave, Cerro AUTANA Cave, Cerro AUTANA

To fly from Autana to Roraima takes several hours in a small plane, but, a very long time ago, their summits were connected as a huge sandstone massif. The forces and upheavals of Continental Drift however started a fragmentation process, breaking up the massif into the hundred or so individual Tepuis as we know them today. The natural ageing erosion processes of rain and wind have done the rest, including the surreal sculpturing of the rock labyrinths on the summits of Roraima.

Cliff of RORAIMA from the ledge

Like so many adventurous tourists do today, I followed Im Thurn's and Perkins' ascent route up to the summit plateau by way of the famous ledge. When I first climbed it in 1974, visitors were infrequent. Now, parties of people make the easy climb almost every day. The trail is now a highway of earth pounded hard by the passage of many people.

Cliff of RORAIMA from the ledge

Reaching the summit, though, is still a magical experience; the towering caricatures of rock faces create an eerie landscape that cannot have changed very much in millions of years. In every direction there is sculptured rock, eroded into grotesque and tortured shapes by the action of rain and wind. The surroundings are so lacking in familiar objects or frames of reference that it is difficult to judge distances accurately and to maintain one's sense of direction. There is also an extraordinary and haunting silence; although one strains the ears to hear something through the gentle whistling of the wind, there is little sound here save for an occasional bird, and the gentle 'pipping' of an unique little black frog known from nowhere else in the world. When you spend a long time in a place like this, your imagination begins to play tricks on the mind.

Rock Shapes, summit of Roraima
Rock shapes, Roraima summit

 

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Eversole Research Collection (ERC): The Life of James Crawford Angel:
Discoverer of the World's Tallest Waterfall — Angel Falls

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