Santa Elena, Venezuela

Trek to Mount Roraima

July 13, 2008

- Bob Dylan

I arrived in Santa Elena from Brazil hoping to hike to Mount Roraima, one of the most famous tepuis in Venezuela and the world. The mountain sits at the triple border between Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana, although the Guyana-Venezuela border is disputed by Venezuela. I spent two days in Santa Elena wandering around the town and looking for a group to join for the hike. Crossing the border from Brazil was easy enough with the numerous shared taxis that cross the border from Pacaraima or La Linea as it is known as. To pay for the trip I had to actually cross back into Brazil because the two ATMs in Santa Elena don´t appear to work with foreign cards. This was also advantageous because by bringing foreign currency into Venezuela you can circumvent the imposed fixed exchange rate that Venezuela has by changing money on the so called Black Market.

The official exchange rate was about 2.1 Bolivars to the US dollar but if you changed US dollars on the Black Market you would get at least 3.1 Bolivars to the dollar. If you were changing Reais you would get about 2.9 Bolivars per US dollar of Reais, almost a ten percent difference. Though the Black Market sounds ominous, in Santa Elena it consists of numerous people that stand around the street corner near Plaza Bolivar and openly change money; while being technically illegal it operates very freely and in plain view. The other strange thing about Venezuela is the time difference; the country is 30 minutes behind Brazilian time and 30 minutes ahead of Colombian time. Why 30 minutes? Because Venezuela lies more or less between the ends of each time zone so Chavez decided to split the difference. What purpose this serves other than to induce confusion and make people half an hour late or early I have absolutely no idea.

It was relatively easy to form a group for the trek to Mount Roraima and I ended up going with 2 Japanese, 2 Colombians, an Australian, and a Swede. We decided to do the trip in 5 days instead of 6 so that we had to carry one day’s less food and because the two Japanese were in a bit of a hurry. The Colombians joined our group at the last minute the morning of our departure and decided to pay for the fancy option so they had porters to carry their stuff and food and prepare meals for them as well. The full price of the tour with porters and food for 6 days was 1100 Bolivars, for us, carrying our own food and bags it cost only 400 Bolivars. Unfortunately Santa Elena has just about the worst selection of food in the stores and there wasn´t even a proper grocery store. Surprisingly the food wasn´t cheap either, especially for what you were getting. I did manage to find some ham and salami and cheese to make sandwiches and bought some other snacks as well. The remoteness of Santa Elena probably contributed to the limited selection and higher than expected prices.

The first day of the journey was easy enough and consisted of a two hour jeep ride to the small indigenous village northeast of Santa Elena that was the starting point for the trek. From there we hiked for about three hours and, after taking off our boots and crossing two rivers, we arrived at the first campsite around 4:30pm. The weather was nice and sunny and we were lucky to get some excellent clear views of Mount Roraima in the distance. The tent was pretty cramped with three of us and sleeping on the hard ground was by no means comfortable. We started early on the second day because we had a long way to travel, needing to reach the top before it got dark. It turned out to be an uphill slog all day long.

The trail wound its way through the rolling hills of the Gran Sabana and after the first hour or so a light rain began to fall. After the second hour the light rain turned into a heavy rain and we continued hiking until we reached Base Camp, the last campsite before the trail really starts going steeply uphill towards the top. Here we had an early lunch and waited for the rain to let up, which it finally did, a little bit at least. From Base Camp the trail was very steep, at times requiring us to climb up rocky slopes. After about an hour and half of hiking through the jungle near the base of Mount Roraima we reached the foot of the shear rock face of Mount Roraima. It was still foggy and rainy so there wasn´t much visibility but looking up as the rock face disappeared into the fog and clouds was an impressive sight.

Forty-five minutes later we reached a steep section of the trail full of loose rocks on which a waterfall was cascading down from the top due to all the rain that was falling. Since we had come up in altitude it was considerably colder and we were all soaking wet from the rain, these two things made us hurry quickly through the waterfall, getting closer and closer to the top. The guide allowed us go ahead because we wanted to move a bit faster and so three of us reached the top first and were huddled under a small rock ledge to stay out of the rain and wind while we waited for the guide to arrive. Luckily we didn´t have to wait long and the guide led us through the bizarre rocky landscape towards a rock overhang that formed a shelter for our tents. It was nice to get out of our wet clothes and I had yet another sandwich for dinner as night fell and the rain continued. The top of Roraima is at an elevation of 2,800 meters so it gets pretty cold at night, as cold as a few degrees above freezing sometimes, a cold that I hadn´t seen since leaving La Paz a month ago, but at least it preserved my sandwich meat.

In the morning we awoke to lots of fog but thankfully no rain. This allowed us to go exploring on the top. The scenery on the plateau at the top was truly amazing, certainly fitting of the title The Lost World. There were strange rock formations and alien vegetation that was like nothing I had ever seen before, shaped by the millions of years that have passed. Without a guide we would have been lost almost instantly as everything looks similar and it is almost impossible to actually walk in a straight line due to the various rock outcroppings, small pools and rivers, and marshy areas. The top is littered with quartz crystals of various sizes that sparkled and shone in the sunlight. We made our way to one side of Roraima where, if it were clear, we would have had a view over the vast expanse of the Guyana jungle; unfortunately it was completely cloudy and foggy and we saw nothing but the vertical drop-off of the rock ledge disappear into the fog. At least I had already gotten to see the Guyana jungle when I was in Guyana. After some further walking we came to some strangely luminescent pools that had cut deep shapes into the rocks and reflected the surrounding alien landscape. We returned to camp for lunch and some rest and as the weather continued to clear we managed to even get some sun for a few minutes here and there but it was still cloudy in the distance and we had no views at all.

Some 30 minutes later we were treated to a clearing in the clouds and we rushed across the rocky landscape toward the edge of Roraima. From the edge we had panoramic views of the vast expanse of the Gran Sabana far below and we could see the small dot of the Base Camp shelter where we had started the day before. Later in the afternoon we hiked up to the highest point of Mount Roraima at 2,880 meters and with a brief clearing of the clouds we had clear views of the shear rock face of Roraima as it tumbled towards the fringes of the jungle surrounding its base. In the distance across the plateau ontop of Roraima, extending as far as we could see was the unique and unforgiving rocky landscape and vegetation that gradually merged with the descending fog. We enjoyed a few moments of sun, as the weather capriciously changed about every two minutes, alternating between sun, clouds, rain, and wind, and sometimes all four at once. The rain set in once again as we returned to camp for one final night on top of Roraima.

The hike back down was pleasant and of course we managed to get lots of rain that formed waterfalls streaming from the top of the sister tepui, which were beautiful to see when you they were visible. We made it back to the first campsite and got to relax and swim in the river while our wet clothes dried in the sun. Fortunately there would be only one more night of sleeping in the tent, which I had grown to loathe due to its lack of space and the hardness of the ground. The last night also meant that my monotonous diet of sandwiches, strawberry sugar wafers, cereal bars, and cookies was also coming to an end. One more morning of mostly dry hiking and we arrived back at the village where we met our jeep to return to Santa Elena.

I was so looking forward to sleeping in a bed that night, but after cleaning up the first thing I did was to head across the border to Brazil to eat in a churrascaria. It was by far the best tasting food I had eaten in the last five days and raised my spirits as I began looking forward to my next stop, Angel Falls.