After a one hour conversation of Mason and me speaking little spanish and Alberto (our guide) speaking spanish mixed with native language we fixed one guide and five porters. Those little natives where welcome to carry some bags on the three day hike trough the hot, open savana and the dense, dark jungle.One step after the other, to reach one goal.
January 30th we left Yunek with a group of ten people hiking on the short dry grass of the savana with each a bag of 30-35 kg. Soon after we left we had to cross a river with hollowed tree trunks, excually really nice canoos. From then on hiking started for real. Passing rivers and strips of jungle we hiked all along the big and famous Akopan Tepuy. Most of the hike was flat, but the sun made it sweaty and hard to breath.
During the hike and in the evening we shared food with the Pemón Indians. They could taste our morning poridge and evening rice with chickensoup out of plastic bags. They seemed to like it a lot, like we liked there food. The dish we got served came straight out of nature; sardines from the river next to camp, the best sweet bananas we ever ate and a delicious plantane soup. It was really special to see how those people lived togheter and did there daily things to survive.
Three days long we hiked towards the impressive yet unclimbed wall. The third day was the shortest but really intense. Like you will see on the pictures we walked the steep jungle slope on the left side of the wall. Here the machete came handy, every then meters we marked a three to find our way back 20 days later without a guide. This hike was hard and such a releave when we arrived at the base of the wall where the porters left us.Picture above: Alberto our guide!
We search our way through even more dense jungle to the other side of the wall, here the machete really served well as we where the first humans going through this part of the jungle. We aimed for an open rocky space out of the jungle. This spot was the perfect dry basecamp we needed (we thought). After one day of throwing blocks arround we had a bedroom, kitchen and storage place. 'The Oasis' basecamp of our trip was made!
From the moment we arrived at the wall it took us only short time to find the line we wanted to climb. This line climbed up directly behind the waterfall 'Salto Tuyuren' who bursted from the top of the wall and turned into a river 500 meters below and 100 meters from the base of the wall. Our line climbed the steepest of the wall an past two massive roofs. Looking up from the base all of us were so amazed by this monstrous beast leaning over us. This wall was intimidating, non of us had ever seen a thing like this. The wall is big, amazingly steep, looked like hard climbing and good rock quality. There was one thing that scared us a little, the gear! Where we going to be able to climb everything with our gear or not?
You'll see, things are only getting better!
From the moment we arrived at the wall it took us only short time to find the line we wanted to climb. This line climbed up directly behind the waterfall 'Salto Tuyuren' who bursted from the top of the wall and turned into a river 500 meters below and 100 meters from the base of the wall. Our line climbed the steepest of the wall an past two massive roofs. Looking up from the base all of us were so amazed by this monstrous beast leaning over us. This wall was intimidating, non of us had ever seen a thing like this. The wall is big, amazingly steep, looked like hard climbing and good rock quality. There was one thing that scared us a little, the gear! Where we going to be able to climb everything with our gear or not?
You'll see, things are only getting better!
.jpg)
3 comments:
Kippevel bij het lezen, en ik heb zo'n gevoel dat het mooiste nog moet komen!
Herman
Als dit een eerste beklimming was, veronderstel ik dat jullie een naam mogen kiezen? Al ideetjes? Maak er iets memorabel van :-).
Maar zus toch! De naam zit in chapter one! :) Rarara?
Een reactie posten