Venezuela · Canaima National Park
Angel Falls (Canaima)
The tallest waterfall on earth, falling off a lost world of a mountain into jungle no road reaches.
Angel Falls drops 979 m off the rim of Auyán-tepui, the tallest uninterrupted waterfall on earth and so high that much of the water blows away as mist before it lands. It sits deep inside Canaima National Park, a Pemón homeland of flat-topped sandstone tepuis, tannin-black rivers and rainforest that no road reaches. Everything starts at Canaima village on its lagoon, flown in on a light aircraft, and the falls themselves are a day further upriver by motorised dugout.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
Spanish
Currency
VES
Timezone
UTC-4
Why you'll love Angel Falls (Canaima)
The falls 979 m of water off a sheer sandstone wall, the last of it drifting down as spray through the trees at Mirador Laime.
The journey a long day in a motorised dugout up black rivers and around rapids, then a hammock camp under the cliff.
The tepuis flat-topped islands of ancient rock standing above the forest, the landscape that gave the lost-world idea its shape.
Pemón country Canaima is an indigenous village, and the boatmen, guides and camps on the river are Pemón-run.
Best time to visit
Sep-Apr
31-34° days
6.242° N, 62.858° W
UTC-4 · America/Caracas
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Weather & when to go to Angel Falls (Canaima)
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Sep-Apr
Watch for Jun monsoon flooding risk
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Angel Falls (Canaima)
June is the wettest, cloudiest month and the least comfortable, though it is also when the river runs high. The harder problem is access: through the dry months, roughly January to May, the Carrao and Churún drop too low for the dugouts and the falls thin to a ribbon, so most visits are overflights only. September to early December pairs settled weather with a navigable river.
Top things to do in Angel Falls (Canaima)
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Angel Falls - the river trip to Mirador Laime
scenic adventure hiking 👍 PopularThe signature journey: hours in a motorised dugout up the Carrao and Churún, through rapids and past the walls of Auyán-tepui, to a hammock camp on the riverbank. Before dawn you climb about an hour through boulders and forest to Mirador Laime, the clearing that faces the drop, with a cold pool to swim in below it.
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Angel Falls overflight - the pass along Auyán-tepui
scenic 👍 PopularSmall aircraft out of Canaima bank in towards the tepui wall and fly the length of the falls, usually turning for a second pass so both sides of the cabin get the view. It is the only way to see them when the rivers are low, and the only way to take in the whole cliff at once.
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Salto El Sapo - walking behind the waterfall
adventure scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedA ledge cut along the rock behind the Sapo curtain lets you walk from one side to the other through the noise and the spray, hand on a guide rope, soaked within seconds. El Sapito next door is smaller and gentler. Almost every Canaima stay includes it, and it is the best hour in the village.
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Canaima Lagoon - the beach below four waterfalls
scenic nature wildlife 👍 PopularThe lagoon is the centre of village life: pale quartz sand, water stained red-brown by tannins from the forest, and the falls of Hacha, Wadaima, Golondrina and Ucaima pouring in along the far shore. Camps line the beach, and the light on the water at the end of the day is the picture people come home with.
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Auyán-tepui and Devil's Canyon - the Churún gorge
hiking nature wildlife adventureAuyán-tepui is the largest of the tepuis, a tilted sandstone tableland split by the Churún gorge that outsiders named Devil's Canyon. The falls pour off its inner wall. Trekking parties take days to reach and cross the summit from the Kamarata side, over black rock, bog and endemic plants that grow nowhere else.
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Kavac Canyon - swimming up the slot to the fall
adventure off beaten path ⭐ Highly recommendedOn the far side of the massif, a short flight from Canaima, a narrow slot in the rock is entered by wading and swimming upstream against the current to a waterfall crashing into a pool at the closed end. The Pemón village of Kavac sits at the mouth of it, thatched huts under the tepui wall.
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Mayupa rapids - the dugout run upriver
adventure nature wildlifeThe first obstacle on the way to the falls, and a half-day outing in its own right: the boat is run empty through the whitewater while passengers walk the portage track, then everyone reboards above it. Shorter trips turn around here, with a swim and a picnic on the rocks.
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Canaima village - the Pemón settlement behind the camps
culture artsBehind the beachfront posadas is a working indigenous village of low houses, a church, a school and a craft market selling basketry and carved wood. Almost every guide, boatman and cook on the river is Pemón, and the place names you are using all along the trip are theirs.
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Jimmie Angel's Flamingo - the plane that named the falls
historyThe monoplane that Angel bogged on the summit of Auyán-tepui in 1937 sat there for decades before the air force lifted it off by helicopter. Restored, it now stands outside the terminal at Ciudad Bolívar, which most visitors pass through on the way in or out.
Best areas to stay in Angel Falls (Canaima)
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Canaima village and lagoon
Everyone visiting the falls $$Pemón village on a waterfall lagoon
Explore hotels in Canaima village and lagoon →
Kavac
Canyon side of the tepui $Thatched Pemón village under Auyán-tepui
Explore hotels in Kavac →
Uruyén
Trekkers $$Remote camp in the Kamarata valley
Explore hotels in Uruyén →
Ciudad Bolívar
Gateway nights $Colonial river city on the Orinoco
Explore hotels in Ciudad Bolívar →
Puerto Ordaz
Connection nights $$Modern industrial city, the region's air hub
Explore hotels in Puerto Ordaz →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Angel Falls (Canaima)
Getting to & around Angel Falls (Canaima)
Getting there
Fly into Canaima on a light aircraft from Ciudad Bolívar or Puerto Ordaz; no road reaches the park.
Flight
Canaima Airport (CAJ)
The airstrip sits at the edge of the village, a few minutes on foot or by camp pickup to the lagoon-side posadas, and your operator meets the plane. Small aircraft take roughly an hour from either gateway city, luggage is weighed strictly, and most people leave a bag behind.
Flight
Canaima airstrip
Light aircraft from Ciudad Bolívar and Puerto Ordaz are the only practical way in, and are normally sold inside a package
Coach
Ciudad Bolívar terminal
Long-distance buses run overnight from Caracas to Ciudad Bolívar and Puerto Ordaz, which is as close as the road network gets
Drive
The highway south from Ciudad Bolívar serves the Gran Sabana and Santa Elena, but nothing turns off towards Canaima
Getting around
Curiara (motorised dugout)
The only way up the Carrao and Churún, and how every trip to the falls is run
TBC
Light aircraft
Kavac, Uruyén and the falls overflight all leave from the Canaima airstrip
TBC
Camp pickup
Trucks shuttle between the airstrip, the village and the posadas, usually arranged by your camp
TBC
On foot
The village and the lagoon beach are small enough to cross in a few minutes
Free
Day trips from Angel Falls (Canaima)
Angel Falls and Mirador Laime
2 daysRiver trip to the falls
The reason to come. Upriver past Isla Orquídea and the rapids to a camp of hammocks under the cliff, then the dawn climb to Mirador Laime for the full drop. Runs only when the rivers are high enough, broadly the wetter half of the year.
Getting there
tour | walk
Four to five hours each way by motorised dugout, plus about an hour on foot to the viewpoint
Salto El Sapo
Half dayWalk behind a waterfall
The standard half day out of Canaima and the one nobody regrets: a cut ledge takes you right behind the falling water and out the other side, drenched. Guides usually add the smaller El Sapito and a swim off the lagoon beach.
Getting there
tour | walk
A short boat crossing of the lagoon, then walking, including the ledge behind the curtain
Kavac Canyon
Full daySlot canyon and village
A flight across Auyán-tepui to a Pemón village of thatched huts, then a wade and swim up a narrowing gorge to a waterfall thundering into a pool at the end of it. Cold, dark and loud, and completely different from the lagoon.
Getting there
flight | walk | tour
Around twenty minutes by light aircraft over the massif, then walking and swimming upstream
Mayupa rapids
Half dayUpriver dugout run
The short version of the river trip, taken when the water is too low to go further or the time too short. The boat is run through the whitewater while you walk the portage, and there is a swim and a picnic on the rocks above.
Getting there
tour | walk
About an hour upriver by dugout with a short portage on foot
Uruyén and the Kamarata valley
1-2 daysTepui-foot village
A small camp in a savannah valley under the southern wall of the massif, used as the start of the trek onto the tepui and for walks to nearby falls and caves. Quiet, rarely busy, and the closest thing here to staying in Pemón country rather than beside it.
Getting there
flight | walk
Roughly half an hour by light aircraft south-east across Auyán-tepui
A little history of Angel Falls (Canaima)
The Pemón have lived under Auyán-tepui for centuries and named both the mountain and the water. Auyán-tepui is the devil's mountain, its summit the country of the mawari spirits and no place to go, and the falls are Kerepakupai Merú. Outsiders were slow to notice. A Venezuelan explorer, Ernesto Sánchez La Cruz, is generally credited with the first report in 1912, but the falls only became famous when an American bush pilot named Jimmie Angel flew past them in November 1933 while hunting for a river of gold he had been told about.
Angel came back in 1937 and put his Flamingo monoplane down on the summit, where it sank into boggy ground; he, his wife and two companions took eleven days to walk off the mountain, and the falls took his name. A survey in 1949 measured them at 979 m and confirmed them as the tallest anywhere. The national park was declared in 1962 and later enlarged to some 30,000 km², about the size of Belgium, before its World Heritage listing in 1994. Angel's ashes were scattered over the falls in 1960, and his aircraft, lifted off the tepui by helicopter in 1970, now stands outside the airport at Ciudad Bolívar.
Ernesto Sánchez La Cruz is generally credited with the first outsider report of a great fall off Auyán-tepui.
Jimmie Angel flies past the falls in November while prospecting over the tepuis, and brings word of them out.
Angel lands on the summit of Auyán-tepui; the aircraft bogs down and the party walks off the mountain over eleven days.
An American Geographical Society expedition surveys the falls at 979 m, establishing them as the tallest known on earth.
Jimmie Angel's ashes are scattered over the falls, four years after his death.
Canaima National Park is created around the western tepuis, and is enlarged eastwards in the following decades.
The Venezuelan air force lifts Angel's monoplane off the tepui by helicopter; it is restored and displayed at Ciudad Bolívar.
Canaima is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its tepui landscape.
President Chávez presses for the Pemón name Kerepakupai Merú to replace Angel Falls in Venezuelan usage.
Know before you go
Payment
Cash only
English
Limited
Wifi
Limited
Power
Type A / B
120 V, 60 Hz
Dialing
+58
Bring cash. Foreign cards and ATMs are unreliable to unusable here, so plan on carrying what the trip needs and changing money on arrival.
Monsoon flooding risk in this window; check current conditions before you go.
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
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FAQs about Angel Falls (Canaima)
▸ When is the best time to visit Angel Falls?
September to early December is the sweet spot: the rivers are still high enough for the dugouts and the weather has settled. The wetter middle of the year carries the biggest flow, but cloud often sits on the tepui and hides the top of the falls. From about January to May the rivers are too low to reach the base.
▸ Can you reach the bottom of the falls all year?
No. The boat trip up the Carrao and Churún depends on water level, so it runs in the wet half of the year, broadly June to December, and is usually off the table in the dry months. Then the only way to see the falls is from a light aircraft, and the drop itself can be down to a thin ribbon.
▸ How long does the Angel Falls trip take?
Three days and two nights is the standard package from Canaima: a long day upriver, a night in hammocks at the camp below the cliff, the climb to Mirador Laime at first light, and the run back down. With a night either side in the village, allow four or five days in total.
▸ Is there a road to Canaima, and can you go independently?
No road reaches the village, so everyone arrives by light aircraft on the airstrip beside the lagoon. The falls sit inside a national park on Pemón land and the river is worked by Pemón boatmen, so there is no realistic way to turn up and hire a boat yourself. Trips are booked as packages with the flight included.
▸ Is it safe to travel to Angel Falls?
Canaima itself is remote, small and built around visitors, and the real risks there are practical ones: small aircraft, rivers and weather. The wider country is why most people fly in and out through Ciudad Bolívar or Puerto Ordaz with an operator rather than moving around Venezuela alone. Check your government's current advice before booking.
▸ Is visiting Angel Falls expensive?
Relatively, and unavoidably: every person, litre of fuel and crate of food arrives by small aircraft, which is what the packages are really paying for. There is no cheap independent version. Bring cash, usually US dollars, and settle the arrangements with your operator before you fly in.
▸ Is this the waterfall from Up?
Paradise Falls in Pixar's Up is modelled on the tepui country, and the film crew travelled to Venezuela to see it, but the falls in the film are invented rather than a portrait of this one. The real Angel Falls is a single long ribbon down a sheer wall, not a wide curtain.