Mount roraima in venezuela. Mysterious Tepui - traces of aliens, prehistoric flora and fauna and ... teleportation of expedition members

In the southeast of Venezuela (South America) there are unusual mountains with truncated, flat tops - tepui, which in the language of the indigenous Pemon Indians means "house of the gods". These mountains are some of the most ancient formations on Earth with an age of about 2 billion years of the Precambrian period and are the remnants of a vast plateau that once stretched from the Atlantic coast to the borders of the Amazon, Orinoco and Rio Negro river basins. They resemble huge tables and mostly stand isolated from each other, towering over the jungle with hard-to-reach cliffs.

Roraima is the highest table mountain in Venezuela, reaching a height of 2810 meters. It is located at the junction of Brazil (Roraima State), Venezuela (Canaima National Park) and Guyana. The surface area of ​​the plateau of the "big blue-green mountain", as it is also called, is about 34 km². Local Indians call it the "navel of the earth", believing that the goddess Queen lives on the very top of the mountain - the progenitor of all people.

A large cloud constantly hangs over Roraima, it rains almost every day, the weather changes quickly and often. Water covers about a fifth of the plateau: peat bogs, bright pink puddles, crystal clear clear lakes, fast-flowing rivers, the channels of which are dotted with rock crystals for several hundred meters. Due to the abundance of precipitation, a huge amount of water falls from Roraima, and at its foot the Amazon, Orinoco and Essequibo rivers originate.

Mysterious Tepui

Tepui is the only place on Earth where no human has set foot. What animals live on Tepui, what plants grow on Tepui - all this is a dark forest for us, since people have visited only some Tepui. A most of Tepui is absolutely unexplored!

They become not only a source of legends and scary stories, but also the subject of creativity for science fiction artists:

Tepuis are mesas in the Guiana Highlands of South America.

The largest natural reserve in Venezuela, national park Canaima, was founded in 1962 and is considered the oldest part of the Earth, whose age exceeds 2 million years. This lost world, as if accidentally preserved as it was many millions of years ago, is visited daily by thousands of tourists.

Roraima is the tallest tepui in Venezuela. Its height is 2810 meters, and the top - a plateau with an area of ​​34 km² - is completely covered with dense vegetation, bizarre stones, steep depressions, caves, small lakes and swamps. Local Indians call Mount Roraima “the navel of the earth” and believe that the progenitor of the human race, the goddess Queen, lives on its top.

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Tepui Roraima in South America

Roraima (Roraima) - the miracle mountain tepui (one of the oldest mountains in the world) is located in South America, where Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil meet. At the confluence of the three states, the height of the mountain above sea level is 2723 m. "Roraima" in translation means "blue-green big mountain". The local Indians call her "The navel of the earth" and according to legend, it is believed that the progenitor of the human race lives here Goddess Queen.

At the top of the mountain there is a plateau the area of ​​​​which is about 84 km², and the length along the border between Venezuela and Brazil is 280 kilometers. There are a couple of dozen mountains in Venezuela With flat tops andvertical slopes(table mountains).

These mountains are stackedhard sandstone and are the remainsvast plateau, whichonce stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the rivers Orinoco, Amazon and Rio Negro and formed about 200 million years ago, when South America and Africa were one.

"Tepui" translated from the language of local Indiansmeans "house of the gods". These tepui standing t mostly isolated from each other in remote jungles,what makes them unique carriers endemic animals and plants. Flora and fauna develop hereover millions of yearsin complete isolation.

Roraima is one among the most famous tepui.

The highest tepui is located in Brazil. This Piso de Neblina. Its height is 3014 m.

The area of ​​the largest tepui Auyantepui is 700 km². Angel - the highest waterfall falls from this mountain.

Road to the Roraima Plateau extremely difficult, she passes through the gorge Guiana Highlands and thickets equatorial forest.

lovers Arthur Conan Doyle know that it is these tepui inspired him to write the world-famous novel The Lost World. tepui south america

Tepuy or Tepui (Tepuis)- mountains with a flat, as if cut top, the so-called "table mountains", are located on the territory of the Guiana Plateau (Spanish: Guayana el Altiplano) in South America, on the border of 3 countries (Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana), for the most part - in Venezuela. The word "Tepui" in the language of the Indian tribe Pemon means "House of the gods."
Tepui rises above the green massif of the tropical jungle with majestic inaccessible cliffs, some of them over 2 thousand meters high. The amazing landscapes with mesas are more like amazing scenery for some kind of science fiction film than reality.

Tepui: Mystery Houses Gods

Most scientists are convinced that Tepui with steep, almost sheer slopes and "cut" flat tops - ancient mountains in the world.

Unusually shaped table mountains tepui are the main attraction of the natural reserve of Venezuela - Canaima Park, which was founded in 1962 and is rightfully considered the oldest and wildest (where no human has even set foot) part of the planet.

The age of this lost world is estimated in millions of years, and it has been preserved here almost in its originality, that is, as it was in the deepest antiquity. It is no coincidence that there are all kinds of legends about tepui, terrible and fantasy stories. Yes, and science fiction artists did not accidentally choose this place for their work.

The junction of three South American states (Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana) is a haven for the amazing and fantastic Mount Roraima. There are many mountains in this area, striking in their height and beauty, but Roraima is the highest of them. Its height reaches 2810 m.

Her summit is a plateau at thirty-four square kilometers covered with bizarre stones, grottoes and caves, swamps and lakes, amazing plants, including many predators, and unusual animals (there are especially many rare monkeys and birds here). Local Indians call Roraima - the navel of the earth and believe that the progenitor of all things on Earth, the goddess Queen, lives here.

The village of Canaima (Spanish: Canaima), located at the northwestern edge of the protected area, on the banks of the Canaima National Park of the picturesque lagoon of the same name (Spanish: Laguna de Canaima), is the base for excursions in the park. There is a small airport near the village, campsites and cottages are equipped in the village itself to accommodate tourists, because most often travelers spend several days in the park.

Here, visitors are offered the most interesting canoe excursions along the amazing lagoon, into which 4 waterfalls flow. Golondrina (Spanish: Salto Golondrina; 50 m) and Ukayma (Spanish: Salto Ucaima; 46 m) can be seen by vacationers by canoeing, and under the waterfalls Acha (Spanish: Salto Hacha; 40 m) and Sapo (Spanish: Salto Sapo; "Zhaba", 20 m) there is a walking path along which you can walk inside the waterfall, between the overflowing water stream and the rock.

In the center of the lagoon rises the island of Anatolia (Spanish Isla Anatoliy). Due to the presence of a significant amount of quartz, the water in the lagoon has a rich brown color, and the sand is pink. But the most famous waterfall and one of the most spectacular sights of the reserve is the world's highest Angel Falls (Spanish: Salto Angel; about 1000 m), excursions to which are carried out either by boat or by boat. small aircraft or helicopters. To admire it, streams of tourists flock to these parts from all over the world.

The waters of Angel rush from one of the most majestic peaks of the plateau, Auyan-Tepui (Spanish: Auyantepui), from a height of about 1 thousand meters. In the dry season (December-March), when the local rivers become shallow, the waterfall can only be reached by air. Auyan-Tepui is considered the largest of the mesas, and the area of ​​​​the plateau of its summit is about 700 square meters. km.

The eastern part of the National Park is called "La Gran Sabana" (Great Plains), on its southeastern edge is Roraima (Spanish Roraima; 2810 m), the highest Tepui of the Venezuelan highlands. Its top, an almost perfectly flat plateau with an area of ​​34 km², is completely covered with lush vegetation, stones of bizarre shape, caves, lakes and small swamps.

The local Indians call Mount Roraima the “Navel of the Earth” and firmly believe that the goddess Queen, the progenitor of the human race, lives on its top. The mysterious tepuis of Venezuela attract millions of tourists every year. Here they can sail through the lagoon in a canoe, admiring the majestic waterfalls of Ukayma, Golondrina, Sapo and Acha, go by plane to the highest Angel Falls in the world (discovered in 1965 by the son of Juan Angel), as well as make numerous hiking. But it's all in without fail accompanied by experienced guides and with strict observance of the rules: this world is still fraught with many unrevealed secrets and riddles.

Scientists who undertook an expedition to these places in the mid-sixties of the last century found a lot of interesting things here. Among their finds were the rarest animals and plants, as well as the remains of the most ancient inhabitants of these regions. Moreover, they died, most likely as a result of experiments on them by aliens. Such a guess arose due to the fact that the scientists of the expedition discovered a kind of laboratory of an extraterrestrial civilization and a powder of unknown origin (as it turned out later, an alloy of the rarest metals, which is simply impossible to create under terrestrial conditions).

But the most surprising were the found crypts, inside of which there was an incomprehensible sweet smell, from which many of the team fell into a kind of coma, and after waking up they told about fabulous travels to other worlds. After such metamorphoses, scientists barely got out of this enchanted world. Waking up in search of a way out for several months, people still managed to escape from fantastic captivity, but, as it turned out, they were absent not for months, as they themselves thought, but for many years ...

And today natural Park Venezuela Canaima - the world of inaccessible and mysterious tepuis is considered the most fantastic place on our planet, the secrets of which we have to unravel, perhaps for more than one century ...

Tepui is actually the only place on the planet where no human foot has set foot. People have visited only some Tepui, most of the mesas are completely unexplored to this day.

Therefore, unusual mountains become a source of legends, beliefs, mystical stories, as well as an inspiration for artists and science fiction writers. The local edges are tightly shrouded in a halo of secrets and mysteries, about which Tepui is covered bizarre rocks, similar to mushrooms ... tell not only centuries-old legends, but also reports of exploratory expeditions.

The last official major expedition to these parts, namely to Roraima, was undertaken in 1965 by the son of Juan Angel (Spanish: Juan Pablo Angel Arango), the discoverer famous waterfall named after the Venezuelan pilot. The expedition diary describes an outlandish world where the flat top of Tepui is covered with bizarre rocks that look like mushrooms, and besides known to science animals there was discovered a strange creature called "Cadborosaurus" (lat. Cadborosaurus willsi). The previously unseen beast had the body of a snake with a series of humps on its back and the head of a horse. Giant ants (more than 5 cm long) were also found, capable of easily biting small branches with their strong teeth; frogs that incubate eggs like birds; insects are bloodsuckers, which were not affected by any, even the most powerful chemical means of protection.

The most significant discovery for scientists was the found remains of ancient animals that recently lived in this area and died, according to some hypotheses, as a result of space alien experiments.

Such a bold assumption of scientists was prompted by the expedition members found a large, as if scorched, round area, completely devoid of vegetation and all strewn with silvery powder of unknown origin. Moreover, laboratory studies of the powder showed that it is an alloy of very rare metals, the creation of which under terrestrial conditions is unrealistic.

The researchers found many cave paintings depicting mythical animals and fantastic creatures resembling people in the caves. Also, members of the expedition came across several crypts, inside which an unusually thick fog hung and a sweet smell hovered.

Several team members, breathing in an unusual aroma, fell into a coma for several days, and when they came to their senses, they told their comrades about incredible visions and movements to other worlds.

After that incident, it was decided to immediately return back, but a new surprise awaited the researchers: they could not find a way out of the ancient enchanted world, as if some mystical forces prevented this in every possible way. Only after a few months, the exhausted travelers managed to return home.

According to them, some kind of supernatural force intervened again, picking up people and slowly lowering them to central square nearest Indian settlement. When scientists finally got to civilization, it turned out that the families had long lost all hope of their return: after all, the expedition, which planned only a couple of months of work, was absent for 4 years.

After this mysterious incident, no expeditions were made to the protected region for a long time, but today the mysterious world attracts thousands of adventurers.

Curious facts

The highest Tepui include the following: Piso de Neblina (Spanish: Pico da Neblina - “Misty”; 3,014 m), located in Brazil; Pico Phelps (Spanish: Pico Phelps; 2,992 m), Roraima (Spanish: Roraima; 2,810 m) and Cerro Marahuaca (Spanish: Cerro Marahuaca; 2,800 m), located at the junction of the borders of 3 countries - Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana.

Angel Falls originates on Auyan Tepui (Spanish: Auyantepui) and falls into the abyss from a height of almost 980 m, despite the fact that the height of the continuous fall of the jet is about 810 m. The height of Angel is 2 times higher than the height of the Empire State Building (Eng. Empire State Building; 103-storey skyscraper on island of Manhattan, New York) and 3 times the height of the symbol of Paris, the Eiffel Tower (300 m).

The huge height of the fall leads to the fact that the water, before reaching the surface of the earth, crumbles into microscopic splashes, turning into a thick fog that envelops the surroundings of the waterfall.

The highest of Tepui, Mount Roraima (2810 m), is also called the "Big Blue-Green Mountain" by the natives. It is considered the deposit of all the diamonds mined in the district, but the Indians are afraid to approach it, fearing evil spirits.

It is very interesting to make an excursion to the Kavak Canyon (Spanish: Canon Kavak) on a small plane, from where the unreal beauty of Canaima opens from a bird's eye view. After flying over the pristine corner of the planet, the plane lands near the canyon, near which there is a small Indian village of the same name.

Tourists can also climb Tepui. Thrill-seekers who decide to do this spend the night in the so-called mountain "hotels" - on narrow rocky "cornices" under overhanging (rocky) "peaks" that shelter from wind and rain. From such sites, a breathtaking, unrealistically beautiful view opens up. The top of the rock, eroded by erosion, breaks off with high walls, and the foot is buried in boundless rainforests.

Fantastic, martian, lunar, unearthly, alien landscape- such epithets are most often used to describe the local stunning landscapes.
The top of Auyan-Tepui is almost constantly shrouded in snow-white clouds, only during sunrise the sky usually clears up.

The wild beauty of the mountains beckons and, at the same time, guards - the giant rocky peaks conceal an age-old secret. Among the many mountain ranges table mountains are especially mysterious, soaring alone above the landscape - they seem unreal, abandoned to Earth from another galaxy, although their flat top and steep slopes formed as a result of quite understandable tectonic processes. Separated from the earth's surface many millions of years ago, high mountain plateaus - carriers of a unique, amazing flora and fauna - this is a unique "lost" world, as if descended from the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle's story.

Table Mountains: origin
Table Mountain (mesa, tableland, tafelberg) is a mountain plateau with an absolutely flat, as if cut, surface supported by steep slopes - hence the origin of the name of the lonely relief formations found on all continents of our planet. Flat-topped rocks owe their origin to tectonic activity, which once raised them above the surface.


McKay, Ontario, Canada
The final touch to the formation of rocky plateaus was made by the processes of erosion and weathering - soft rocks were washed away, while harder ones - sandstone, quartzite, basalt, limestone - remained. A separate group is made up of table mountains formed as a result of volcanic eruptions - they are characterized by a peak composed of igneous rocks.

Table mountains of South America
On the Guiana plateau Latin America- in Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana, there are rocks with flat peaks, named in the local dialect of the indigenous people - Tepui, which means "house of the gods." The Tepui rock formations are composed of sheer blocks of Precambrian quartz sandstone. Separated from the surrounding landscape, hanging in the form of islands 1-3 thousand meters high above the tropical forest, tepui are the owners of endemic flora and fauna. Rare flowers grow on the high plateaus - orchids and carnivorous plants, due to rocky soils that are poor in nutrients and unsuitable for other plant species.


Tepui-Ujnaya-America

At one time, science adhered to the hypothesis that the biodiversity of the rocky hills of South America is relict, which has not passed the stage of mixing of species. However, recent studies by scientists prove that tepui were not so tightly isolated from environment, as previously thought - for example, the endemic tree frog Tepuihyla got to the top of the Latin American tepui already after the mountain range had formed. In total, there are about 60 flat-topped formations in this region.

The most famous mesas-tepui mountains in South America:

1. Roraima (Mount Roraima, 2810 m), peak area 31 km2. Inspired by Robert Schomburk's report on the rock mass of Latin America, which was presented to the Royal Geographical Society in 1844, Conan Doyle wrote his story "The Lost World" - it was Roraima who became the prototype of the mysterious mountain country inhabited by outlandish prehistoric animals.

Roraima Tepui, South America

2.Auantepui. This table mountain is the owner of the most high waterfall in the world - Angel (979 m), falling into a lake with a depth of 807 m. In the language of the indigenous population - pemons, the waterfall was until recently called Kerepakupai Vena. The current name is Angel, he received in honor of the American pilot Jimmy Angel, whose monoplane made an emergency landing at the top of the plateau in 1937. It took the angel and his three companions 11 days to descend the mountain and return back to the civilized world. Only 33 years later, the legendary aircraft was raised from the top of the mountain, restored in the Aviation Museum and hoisted at the entrance to Ciudad Bolivar Airport.

Auan Tepui, Angel Falls, Venezuela

3. Kukenan or Matavi tepui (Matawi Tepui) , 2680 m), 3 km long. Local population- Pemon Indians, consider the lonely standing table mountain to be the country of the dead, the Kukenan River originates here.

Kukenan Tepui, Venezuela, South America

4. Ptari (Ptari-Tepui, 2700 m ). The classic version of the table mountain of South America - with a perfectly cut top and absolutely vertical slopes.

Ptari tepui, Venezuela, Latin America


Carnivorous Heliamphora flower on Ptari Tepui

5. Autana Tepui, 1300 m ). This plateau is notable for the fact that a horizontally oriented cave passes through its thickness, penetrating the rock through and through.

Tepui Autana, South America

6. Sarisarinam (Sarisarinama). The study of the mountain plateau began in 1961, when pilot Harry Gibson noticed unique holes on its flat top. natural origin. Vertical cave-wells go deep into the rock - the longest of them has a length of 1.35 km.

Tepui Sarisarinama, Venezuela
Table mountain Tucumcari (Tucumcari Mountain) in Mexico is not much different from the tepui of the Guiana massif - at 1517 meters it rises above the South American savannah. Opened in 1793, the hermit peak caused a lot of controversy on the sidelines of scientists on the subject of age: at first it was assumed that the table mountain was formed during the Jurassic period, then it turned out that the rocky formation was younger and belongs to the Cretaceous period.

Tucumcari, Mexico
Nature has not bypassed Argentina either - there are also lonely mountains with horizontal ends on its territory - the duet of peaks of the Sierra Negra massif is located near the city of Zapala, famous for its coffee plantations. In addition to coffee, this region of South America is rich in precious metal deposits. In the depths of the mountain range there are gold mines, which have recently been run by the Canadian company Goldcorp - according to experts, about 0.5 million ounces of gold per year will be mined at the mine over the next 9 years, in July 2014 the first 100 kg were withdrawn from the stone depths.

Sierra Negra, Argentina

Table mountains of North America
Canyonlands National Park (Canyonlands national park) in the state of Utah, near the city of Moab - a vivid example of eroded lands with multiple canyons, hills and mesas, between which the Colorado River and the Green River flow. The park is conditionally divided into three zones: Island in the Sky, Needles and Maze, each of which is remarkable in its own way. "Island in the Sky" is an extended plateau 366 m high, indented by the Colorado channel 305 m deep, with highest point White Rim, the Needles Zone is famous for its well-preserved clay dwellings of the American natives and the "stone newspaper" - Newspaper Rock - with petroglyphs carved on the rocks. In the Maze zone is the Barrier Canyon - the most inaccessible part of the plateau, where rock paintings and pictograms of ancient hunter-gatherers dating back to 2 thousand years BC were found.

Canyon Land, Utah, USA
On the border between Utah and Arizona lies the Monument Valley with solitary flat-topped peaks sometimes reaching 300 meters. The local Navajo Indians call this area, which belongs to the Colorado Plateau, the Valley of the Stones. The terracotta color of the mountains is due to the presence of iron oxide in the rock, and the darker, gray-orange hue of some rocks is due to manganese oxide. In the 1950s, uranium, vanadium and copper were mined in Monument Valley.

Monument Valley, Utah, USA
In the state of Colorado, on the green Mesa Verde plateau, there is a national park - this is the country of Montezuma - an ancient city built by the Pueblo people (Anasazi Indians) many centuries ago. Over 600 rock dwellings were erected from 400 to 1200 AD. at the foot of the emerald table mountains and in their thickness, but after a 25-year drought, people were forced to leave their inhabited place.

City of Montezuma, Mesa Verde, Colorado, USA
Glass Mountains or Gloss Hills - table mountains in the western region of Oklahoma (USA), rise above ground level from 46 to 61 meters. The array of hills with flat tops got its name back in 1820 from the first explorers of America due to sparkling inclusions of selenite.

Table Mountains Glass, Oklahoma, USA
In Oklahoma, on the Great Plains, there is another similar natural formation - the Black Mesa Plateau (Black Mesa, 1516 m) with a length of 270 km - on the top of this table mountain, native Indians have been setting up their camps for centuries.

Black Mesa, Oklahoma, USA
Over the coast of Cuba, in the province of Guantanamo, hangs the high plateau of El Yunque (El Yunque, 575 m), resembling a blacksmith's table in outline - this feature of the mountain served as the impetus for choosing its name: "yunque" is translated from Spanish as an anvil.

El Yunque, Cuba

Table mountains in Africa
Mountain fortress or Amby - the so-called table mountains in Africa - rocky plateaus in northern Ethiopia, composed of basalt and sandstone. There are three ambas in the Amhara region at once: Amba Geshen or Amara, Wehni and Debre Damo. The Amba Mountains are known as a place of imprisonment for brothers and male relatives of the king of Ethiopia, including sons. The unfortunate fell into a high-altitude dungeon immediately after the coronation of the heir to the throne and left it only after his death. When the sad tradition was annulled, in a remote mountainous area - in the temples on the tops of the rocks, they kept the treasures of the royal dynasty. Mount Geshen is famous for its Orthodox Church Lalibela in the form of a cross carved into the rock, and the table mountain Debre Damo (2216 m) is a Christian monastery of the 6th century.

Table mountain in Africa Debre Damo, Ethiopia


Orthodox monastery Lalibela on the table mountain Geshen, Ethiopia, Africa


African mesas in northern Ethiopia
On the territory of Ethiopia, many rocks with vertical slopes and a flat top are scattered: Amba Aradam (2756 m), Amba Alagi (3438 m), Kundudo (3000 m). In 2008, a lost stalagmite cave was discovered on Mount Kundudo with ancient rock paintings. Here is the habitat of the only population of wild horses preserved in the world.

Table mountain Kundudo, Ethiopia, Africa


Ammonites on Kundudo Mesa, Ethiopia


Coral stalagmites in a cave on Mount Kundudo, Ethiopia, Africa

The most famous African plateau in the world is the Table Mountain (1084 m) of Cape Town (South Africa) with a length of 3 km. It is also the symbol of the city, featured on its flag. A striking feature of the African mountain plateau - orographic clouds, almost constantly enveloping its top, form, as it were, a tablecloth on a flat tabletop. Local natives attribute unusual cloudiness to the devil lighting his pipe in the company of the pirate Van Hunky - this is ancient legend associated with Table Mountain. The age of the South African Table Mountain, built of hard gray quartz sandstone, is about 500 million years. The 2,200 species of plants growing on the high plateau are endemic and found nowhere else in the world. The symbol of the country of South Africa is a rare protea flower, the unique species of which are presented in the Table Mountain National Park.

Table Mountain Cape Town, South Africa, Africa
On the territory of Namibia, there are also several well-known rocky hills with a cut end: Etjo (500 m) with a length of 10 km, Grutberg (1840 m), Waterberg and Gamsberg. Their strange names in the Aryan way, the mesas of Namibia received from the first German explorers.

Table Mountain Etjo, Namibia, Africa


Table mountain Gamsberg, Africa


Table Mountain Waterberg, Africa

Table mountains of Western Europe
An unusually beautiful rocky formation with a flat end in Ireland (County Sligo) - table mountain Ben Balben (Benbulbin) - is part of the array of green mountains Darty. The name comes from the Irish word Binn, which means "peak", and Ghulbain, "jaw". Table mountain Ben Balben was formed about 320 million years ago due to the movement of ice from the northeast to the southwest of the island, during ice age. Once upon a time, the high plateau was under the thickness of the ancient sea, as evidenced by fossilized marine organisms - shells and corals found by scientists in all layers of the rock. Ben Bulben is composed mainly of limestone and mudstone, a fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of petrified mud and clay.

Table Mountain Ben Bulben, Ireland, Europe

Table mountain Monte Santo (Monte Santo, 733 m), adjacent to the flat-topped rock of San Antonio in the Siligo region, is a landmark of the island of Sardinia (Italy).


Table mountain Monte Santo Sardinia island, Italy

Australian table mountains
Terracotta rock Uluru (Ayers Rock, 348 m) is considered the "heart" of Australia. Aborigines of the Anangu tribe settled in this area 10 thousand years ago, after a spring was discovered, beating directly from the top of a stone hill. Sacred to the natives, the table mountain Uluru is shrouded in an ominous haze - it is believed that it brings bad luck to those who try to climb it or take a piece of stone with them.

Table Mountain Uluru, Australia

northern mesas
In the northern latitudes, canteens or tabletop mountains have their own name - thuya (tuya). Tui are rock formations with a flat top, formed as a result of a volcanic eruption under the ice, as a result of which the lava came to the surface and transformed into solid basaltic rocks after cooling.

Table Mountain Brown Bluff, Antarctica
Thuja Brown Bluff, about a million years old and about 1.5 km long, is located on the northern tip of Antarctica. Red-brown tuff at the foot of the table mountain smoothly turns into an ash-gray top, cut by erosion. Brown Bluff is a world ornithological reserve - here is the habitat of an extensive colony of birds: 20 thousand pairs of Adélie penguins and 550 pairs of gentoos penguins.

Table Mountain Brown Bluff, Antarctica
In Canada, mainly in British Columbia, there are whole groups of high plateaus. One of them is the 2021-meter table mountain Table Mountain, standing in the middle of Lake Garibaldi.

Dining room mountain Table, Canada
In the northern regions of the United States, you can find mesas-tuyas, formed on the site of stratovolcanoes and as a result of the descent of glaciers. In Oregon, there is the plateau Hayrick Butte (Hayrick Butte, 1683 m) - this is a kind of subglacial volcano with absolutely vertical slopes. At a distance of 3 km from it there is another thuja volcano - Hogg Rock (Hogg Rock, 1548 m). Unlike other table formations, Hogg Rock has one gentle slope, along which a road is laid to the top of the plateau.

Table Mountain Hayrick Butte in Oregon, USA


Diomede Islands in the Coastal Strait
The unusual Diomedes Islands, the smaller of which belongs to the United States, and the larger to Russia, are subglacial dormant thuja volcanoes in Bering Strait with a flat top. At times cold war between the USSR and the USA Diomedes, between which the state border passes, bore the symbolic name of the "ice curtain".

Table mountains on Mars
Alpine plateaus in the form of table mountains exist not only on Earth, in the solar system they are also found on Mars - in the transition zone between the highlands and the plain, and their height varies from 100 m to 2 km. Scientists believe that the Martian mesas were formed due to the movement of ice and its subsequent evaporation in the atmosphere.

Several dozen peculiar mountains with vertical slopes and flat tops are scattered along the Guiana Highlands in the northeast of South America. These mountains are among the oldest in the world. They are composed of very hard sandstone and are the remains of a long-destroyed plateau. These mountains are called tepui (the word is taken from the language of the local Pemon Indians).

Roraima Plateau, Venezuela

Tepui country is one of the most unusual and beautiful landscapes in the world. Here are the world's highest waterfall (Angel on Ayan-tepui, or Auyantepui, about 1200 m high), many smaller waterfalls (250-meter Kaieteur and 70-meter Orinduik in Guyana are especially popular with tourists), giant caves and failures. On the tops of some tepui no human foot has yet set foot.

Beautiful landscapes of the tepui country

The highest tepui is Mount Roraima (2810 m) at the junction of the borders of Venezuela, Guyana and Brazil. At one time, Roraima served as the prototype of the plateau inhabited by dinosaurs in the "Lost World" by A. Conan Doyle. After many unsuccessful attempts, the mountain was conquered in 1884.

Sunset in the "lost world"

Dinosaurs were not there, but the researchers found on the top a lot of amazing animals and plants that are not found anywhere in the world except Roraima and neighboring Kukenan-tepui.

Crocodile Orinoco - relative of dinosaurs

The peaks of the tepui are like islands in the sky, where flora and fauna have developed in isolation over millions of years. The nature of these cold "islands" is completely different from rainforests and savannas at the foot of the mountains.

Pink flamingos, Venezuela

The sheer walls of Roraima seem impregnable.

The impregnable walls of Roraima

The heroes of The Lost World reached the summit plateau by climbing a detached cliff and cutting down a large tree that served as a bridge. Roraima indeed has a "suitable" cliff, but the gap between it and the plateau is too wide, and there are no large trees at such a height. Climbing the mountain without the help of climbing equipment is possible only in one place, along a narrow sloping ledge called the "Ramp".

Picturesque cliffs of tepui, Venezuela

Today, several dozen people a day climb Roraima. This is part of a national park and climbing is only allowed with a guide.

Capybara is the largest rodent

Almost all tourists buy organized tours lasting five or seven days (the second option is much better - participants of five-day tours can spend only a couple of hours on the plateau).

Bats in the national park, Venezuela

In the Venezuelan town of Santa Elena de Airen on the Brazilian border (which can be reached in a day by evening bus from Caracas), a seven-day tour costs about a hundred dollars, in Caracas - already about three hundred. You are given a warm sleeping bag and a sweater.

Tepui mountains are one of the most famous and mysterious mesas V South America. They are located on Guiana Highlands. The age of these mountains is approximately 200 million years. They consist of a single block of quartz or Precambrian sandstone.

What are table mountains?

The name "Tepui" was coined many years ago by a tribe of Indians and means "house of the gods". The height of the mountains can reach 2000 meters. They rise dramatically above the jungle vegetation and have steep rocky slopes and a flat top. It is these mountains that are called mesas.

Table mountains tepui located partly within the Canaima National Park in Venezuela. Together with the park itself, they are included in the UNESCO list. The reason for this was the presence of unique flora and fauna of the mountains. Being a place where no man has gone before, tepui preserved unique ancient species of extraordinary plants. The most beautiful of them are the oldest orchid plants, as well as unique carnivorous plants that eat small representatives of the animal world.

Climate on the surface and slopes Tepui Mountains in South America varies depending on the season and time of year. Sometimes there is a drought in the mountains, or on the contrary they pour heavy rains. The average air temperature ranges from 5 to 20 degrees. On the tops of the highest mountains of Tepui, the temperature at night can drop to 0 degrees. The air temperature depends on the measurement height.

The highest mountains of Tepui.

The highest are located Tepui there where the borders of Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana converge. Max Height reaches the mountain of Pico de Neblina. Its height is over 3000 meters. A few more unusual famous mountains. For example, on one of the mountains of Tepui is the highest Angel Falls in the world. The name of this table mountain is Auyantepui.

Tepui called Autana is not huge, its height is only 1300 meters. Main Feature This mountain is a cave that runs through the entire interior of the mountain. But this is not all the features of the Tepui mesas, which are fraught with mysterious South America.

Thanks to its unusual flora tepui are the most famous in the world mesas. One of the brightest representatives of the most ancient vegetation is the Sarisarinyama tepui. On the surface of this mountain there are quite deep funnels of a round shape. At the bottom of these funnels, unique and mysterious species of representatives of the plant world have found shelter.

With all the advantages of the tepui mesas, it is better to see them once than to hear about them many times. Their majesty and perfection is what every tourist visiting South America needs to see. Canteens Tepui mountains is a miracle of nature that must be imprinted in your memory forever.