Salto Ángel Overview

We finally visited the natural crown jewel of Venezuela about 2 months prior to departure. That's Salto Ángel, Angel Falls, or Kerepakupai Meru in the native Pemon language. It's also the inspiration for Paradise Falls in the Disney Pixar movie Up. This post will serve as an overview for the other blog posts about the trip. I took so many pictures and it's such a big experience that it needs more coverage. It's really worth digging into this trip as an amazing bucket list experience.

The trip began with a 6am flight from Caracas to Puerto Ordaz on Rutaca Airlines for 45 minutes. The local airline is actually an airdot since they only have one plane. This joke was provided by one of our friends and I find it hilarious. This fact will also become important later.

That flight was followed by another 45 minute flight at 9am on Transmandu from Puerto Ordaz to Canaima. This got us to our destination and first blog post at the wonderful Waku Lodge. The afternoon brought us to our first excursion on a short boat ride across the lagoon to the falls of Salto El Sapo y Salto El Hacha (above) which is the next blog post.

We took a 4 hour trip during the next morning from the top of Salto El Hacha to camp near Angel Falls. After lunch was a 3 hour round trip hike to an overlook (underlook?) to get a closer look. You can see many pictures and read about the restroom adventure at the blog post for our Trip to Angel Falls.

The next day gave us an amazing morning light shining beautifully on Angel Falls. The magical view shown below was much better in person. The return trip was filled with even more beauty which you can see in the post for Angel Falls and Back Again. That trip back was only 2 hours as the boat took us downstream. If that wasn't enough then we hopped into a small plane soon after returning to Waku Lodge. The plane took us to Kavak for lunch and a little excursion. We saw a lot of scenery along the way including the falls again which you can see in the post about Flying Around Angel Falls.

If that wasn't enough then the destination for the flight had another surprise. We did a little hike, wade, and swim to a waterfall in a gorge in Kavak or Kavac. We didn't know the setting for the waterfall would be like that so check out that blog post.

They didn't have room for us in Waku Lodge for our last night so we moved over to a wonderful and exclusive night in Ara Merú Lodge next door. Check the blog link for pics and more info about how exclusive it was for us.

The next day was a flight on Transmandu back to Puerto Ordaz where we had to spend the night for our connecting flight. It was a connecting flight that never happened. Rutaca's plane (remember, they're an airdot, not an airline) had an emergency landing a couple of days prior and was still under maintenance. Our friends were supposed to be back in Caracas the day before us but we all ended up in Puerto Ordaz at the same time trying to get home. We ended up hiring a van to drive us back. It was an 8 hour cross-country drive instead of a 45 minute flight, but we made it back safely over the deteriorating roads and multitude of police and military checkpoints.

Everything we did with flights, lodging, food, and excursions was arranged for only $900 per person because we live in Venezuela. I can't imagine how much this would have cost us in a normal economy.

Americans right now need a tourist visa to visit Venezuela so that's the first hurdle. International flights have been disappearing in the last 2 years so their costs have greatly increased. I won't even talk about the crime and security concerns.

Venezuela has become a rare destination for the typical American tourist which unfortunately means this glorious environment is that much harder to see. I'm grateful I had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience it while I could. I can't imagine it would have happened if we hadn't lived here. Overall this was a bucket list trip that we were fortunate to finally achieve.

What a wonderful adventure!