We went on a 6 day trek to climb the highest mountain outside of the Andes, Mount Roraima. It´s a table top mountain and rises to 2850m. The first 2 days were solid trekking across baking hot savannah, wading across rivers and getting eaten by tiny little flies that simply swarm all over you. I had 15 bites on my left elbow alone, and I think there must be well over 100 on my body in total - They´re really nasty little buggers!! After two days we were at base camp and the climb began. The climb is really hard, at least 45 degrees incline constantly for about 4 hours.
The ´path´ barely qualified as one and in places we were simply scrambling up rock falls, and in one place up a waterfall with freezing cold water crashing down on us and a 2000m sheer drop on one side! Put simply, it´s easily the hardest thing I have ever done in my life! To top it all off we were carrying our full size packs, in my case all 65 litres of it! (clothes, camping gear, etc). The top of Mount Roraima is the reason for going, and it really is a very strange place indeed. The plant life on the top of the mountain has evolved in isolation from the rest of the world and hence out of 2000 plant species, more than half of them are endemic (they only grow there). Apparently these plants can only be found as fossils anywhere else! The top is like being on another planet... black rocks of all shapes and sizes, pools of water that have slowly eroded in the most wonderful shapes, little black frogs about the size of the end of your thumb. It´s very odd indeed, reminiscent of a set from an old Sci-fi movie. Thick cloud can roll in at a minutes notice completely engulfing the top of the mountain so you can´t see a bloody thing! The top is about 32 square kilometers so you really don´t want to get lost. While we were up there a couple of Czechs got lost in the clouds and spent a freezing cold night huddled together (oooer) in a cave!! Can´t have been nice in shorts and a T-shirt given it was nearly below freezing at night! The way back from Roraima was long and arduous... more baking hot Savannah, more man eating flies... not nice, I´m glad it´s over!After 24 hours on a bus, we´ve arrived on the Caribbean coast for Christmas at a place called Puerto Columbia. We have yet to explore...
Happy Christmas.
2 comments:
Hi Steve,
I hope your bites have stopped itching by now? Those blighters sound even worse than Florida's fire ants. Other than that part of it, it sure sounds as if the mountain hike was an out-of-this-world experience. Dick and I have been up Mount Washington, the highest peak on the U.S. Eastern coastline, so I know what it's like when those clouds suddenly roll in, and I remember how spectacular it was to see. But at least there are precious few insects on the top of Mount Washington, as it has an arctic climate.
Have a wonderful Christmas, wherever and however you spend it!
Love,
Aunt Doris.
Stephen,
What a climb - much more gruelling than the "three peaks in 24 hours" challenge you did recently, we bet! And those bites - how irritating they must have been, but hope they are all cleared up by now. Your Christmas Day photo looks perfect, a lovely place to relax after that climb. Enjoy New Year in Colombia, if that is where you end up, and we wish you both a wonderful 2007 making and storing up memories to last a lifetime!
Norma and Len
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