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WONDERS OF NATURE
Angel Falls. Nature miracle
To see the Angel Falls - the highest on our planet - you need to make a trip to the "lost world". Yes, yes - it is the southeast of Venezuela, where this unique waterfall is located, that the famous Conan Doyle chose as the setting for the novel with that name. And the most amazing thing is that the fantasy of the writer, who placed in the mountains among the jungle a mysterious world cut off from the rest of the country, which time has not touched and which is inhabited by unprecedented animals and plants, is not so far from reality.
Here, on the edge of the Guiana Highlands, its spurs form unusual, not found anywhere else, huge isolated mesas - tepui. These, in fact, are not even mountains, but entire plateaus, sometimes up to a thousand square kilometers in area, with steep, hard-to-reach slope walls several hundred meters high, composed of red sandstone. One of these tepui, Mount Roraima, rising almost three kilometers above sea level, served as the prototype for the English writer of his "Maple White country". In the middle of the XNUMXth century, the first European visited here - the German scientist Schomburgk. He was amazed by what he saw, saying that he had visited "truly strange places" where rivers with black and red water flow and mountains rise with kilometer-long sheer walls and cascades of waterfalls falling from them. A little later, the English botanist Bates brought from the area a large collection of plants, none of which was known to science. For a long time, then tepui did not enjoy the attention of researchers. The impenetrable jungle reliably hid them from prying eyes, and rapids and waterfalls prevented them from getting into this region along the rivers. Only almost a hundred years later, in 1935, the search for diamonds brought here the desperate pilot Angel, who, deviating from the course, accidentally flew at the foot of the highest table mountain - Auyan Tepui. What he saw shocked him to the core: from the very top of the plateau, from almost a kilometer high, a foamy-white river fell down. Angel was lucky three times. At first, he, who was actually looking for diamond placers in the Orinoco jungle, lost his course just in the Auyan-Tepui area. Another gift of fate was good weather, which made it possible to see the waterfall, later named after him (in Spanish transcription - Angel). Usually the peaks of the tepui are shrouded in fog, hiding their slopes from the pilots. And for the third time, happiness smiled at Angel when he landed on the top of Auyan Tepui, having suffered an accident, but survived. The fact that a brave pilot managed to descend from a kilometer-long cliff and get through almost impenetrable thickets, teeming with crocodiles and snakes, to populated areas, is like a miracle. The nature of the area around Angel is eloquently evidenced by the fact that the participants of a well-equipped professional expedition, which set off 12 years later to an unprecedented natural phenomenon (the highest waterfall known at that time was three hundred meters lower), spent 19 days only to overcome the last 36 kilometers ! But what they saw on Auyan-Tepui rewarded them for all the difficulties they endured. A mighty white-foamed water column over a kilometer high fell from the plateau and flew into the valley in a tight roaring jet. But, having flown two-thirds of the way, it suddenly seemed to melt and break off in the fog, turning into fine water dust. And even lower, as if born out of nothing, the river raged... The surveyors of the expedition carefully measured the height of the falls. It consisted of two steps: the upper - eight hundred meters, and the second, exceeding 170 meters. In total, it turned out 979 meters. (Later, more accurate instruments noted the figure of 1054 meters, which is now accepted on all maps of the world.) The height of the plateau itself above sea level was 2950 meters. It was possible to climb Auyan Tepui from below only in 1956. At the same time, a lot of interesting things turned out. Firstly, the mountain turned out to be a kind of moisture condenser: it rained 7500 millimeters a year, which is five times more than at its foot. And besides, this is an area of exceptional thunderstorm activity. In summer, thunderstorms happen here daily, and not a single tree is left on the plateau that has not been crippled by lightning. It is not for nothing that the Indians considered the foggy mysterious mountain a disastrous place and gave it such an expressive name. (Auyan-Tepui in their language is "Devil's Mountain".) And scientists managed to climb to the top of Roraima only after 20 years. The expedition, led by experienced climber Don Willans, the conqueror of Chomolungma, took almost a month to overcome the last vertical wall of 400 meters in height. The plateau, according to Willans, turned out to be a monolithic rock with fantastic outlines. Strange, mushroom-like growths of stone protruded here and there on the flat top, and between them were round depressions filled with water. The highest point of the plateau (2810 meters) was separated from the rest of it by deep cracks, which the climbers could not overcome without additional equipment. The fauna of Roraima, contrary to Conan Doyle, turned out to be poor. No pterodactyls or other ancient lizards were found here - only opossums, small lizards and black toads, which were thought to be found only in Africa. On the other hand, the vegetation in this wet land was exceptionally diverse, and the expedition discovered many rare species of flora here. Another tepui, Sarisanyama, is located south of Roraima and Auyan Tepui, near the border with Brazil. In 1966, from an airplane flying over the mountain, two large craters were noticed on its flat top. The message of the pilots immediately interested scientists: after all, from the point of view of geology, it was incredible - volcanoes simply could not be on such an ancient mountain range. But only in 1974, a group of researchers managed to land from a helicopter on Sarisanyama. It turned out that the failures discovered from the air are not volcanic craters, but karst funnels washed by powerful water flows. The larger of the two sinkholes was 375 meters deep and 400 meters in diameter. On steep, almost sheer walls, scientists managed to descend to the bottom of a giant well. Huge boulders lay at the bottom and streams flowed. Although the rays of the sun illuminated the bottom for only three hours a day, it was covered with lush vegetation. At the same time, 80 percent of the "crater" plants were unknown to science. Among them, they found, in particular, several species of flowering plants that fed on ... insects, like our sundew. And among the ferns, they found a number of species that were found on our planet only in the Mesozoic era, that is, 140-180 million years ago. But the animal world at the bottom of the abyss was as poor as on Roraima. Despite all the inaccessibility, tepui turned out to be an extremely interesting object for biologists, and scientific expeditions have been actively storming the Venezuelan foggy plateaus in recent years. One by one, they begin to reveal their secrets to researchers. The next surprises were presented to scientists by another tepui, located not far from Sarisanyama, also on the Brazilian border. This huge mountain with a flat top, standing completely apart, tens of kilometers from the nearest mountain range, was discovered during aerial photography. Its height exceeded 3100 meters. The mountain was named Sierra Neblina ("Misty Mountain"). More than twenty years passed before one of the many expeditions managed to reach this remote, swampy jungle area. Only in May 1984, after a long assault, the mysterious peak was conquered by the Venezuelan scientific and sports team. Upon closer examination, the surface of the summit turned out to be by no means a flat plateau. In the middle of it gaped a deep basin, similar to the crater of a volcano, with an area of 650 square kilometers. And here scientists finally discovered a truly "lost world". It took another expedition to collect and take out from here a lot of animals and plants unknown to science, found on the Sierra Neblin. And their study will last, apparently, for many more years. In one of the streams at the top, they caught, for example, a fish with a broom-like head. They also discovered new frogs, unknown to zoologists: one with a snout like a dog's muzzle, the other with dish-shaped lips. Moreover, they hatched their frogs like birds. Giant dragonflies flew over the water with a wingspan of 30 centimeters and huge eyes with a golden sheen. Such lived on Earth in the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago, even before the era of dinosaurs. Scientists have met giant aggressive ants on the Sierra Neblin, dangerous even for large animals and humans. With their steel jaws, they easily bit through tree branches. Interestingly, no chemical agents acted on bloodsucking insects, as well as on huge, five times larger than usual, tarantula spiders. Found on the plateau and new species of bats, birds and snakes. The plant world of tepui simply shocked botanists. Of the plants they collected, 98 percent were unknown. More than two hundred new species of ferns were collected alone! In glades covered with reindeer lichen, lichen, rose slender palm trees, and next to them - typical African plants, not found in South America. From cracks in the rocks, brown tree-like trunks rose several meters into the air. But they did not consist of wood, but of a soddy root system. The crowns of these "trees" resembled open artichokes. Everywhere were pineapple plants as tall as a man with huge, water-filled leaf rosettes that served as reservoirs for small animals. Orchids covered the soil like a dense carpet. The largest flowers resembled vases or jugs of one and a half meters in height, into which, as if in traps, insects fell, and small rodents were digested there with the help of caustic juice secreted by orchids. But not only giant orchids were predatory here. A variety of plants lay in wait in streams and on land, caught with traps, wrapped around and strangled small animals. Scientists explain the presence of predatory plants on many tepui by the fact that abundant tropical rains wash out all the nutrients from the soil on these plateaus, and especially nitrogen and phosphorus, which are so urgently needed by plants. So the representatives of the green kingdom had to find another way to satisfy their vital needs. Exploration of the "lost worlds" of the Venezuelan jungle - the mysterious tepui - continues. And surely the flora and fauna of these peculiar "Noah's arks", isolated for millions of years from the rest of the world, will present many more surprises. By the way, it is possible that the pearl of this mysterious land, Angel Falls, will have to part with the glory of the highest in the world. The Italian traveler Garbari, who explored the southern regions of Venezuela, recently reported that in the mountains of Marahuaca he discovered a waterfall much higher than Angel. True, Garbary could not accurately measure the height of its fall, and only the next expedition will be able to determine which cascade to award the palm to. In the meantime, Angel remains the official champion among the waterfalls of the world and, despite the inaccessibility, attracts the attention of tourists and scientists. On inflatable canoes and helicopters, people get to the foot of Auyan Tepui to see with their own eyes an amazing natural miracle - a foamy river falling down from under the clouds, from the height of two Ostankino television towers. Author: B.Wagner
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