Mount roraima in venezuela. Inaccessible and mysterious Tepui! Table mountains tepui in venezuela
On the Guiana Plateau of Latin America - in Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana, there are rocks with flat peaks, named in the local dialect of the indigenous peoples - 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, tepui are the owners of endemic flora and fauna. Rare flowers grow on the high plateaus - orchids and, due to rocky soils that are poor in nutrients and unsuitable for other plant species.
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 as rigidly isolated from the environment as previously thought - for example, the endemic Tepuihyla got to the top of Latin American tepui 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 the report of Robert Schomburk 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 a mysterious mountainous country inhabited by outlandish prehistoric animals.
Roraima Tepui, South America
2. Auantepui. This table mountain is the owner of the highest waterfall in the world - Angel (979 m), falling into a lake with a depth of 807 m. In the language of the indigenous population - Pemon, the waterfall was called Kerepakupai Vena until recently. 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. The local population, the Pemon Indians, consider the lonely standing table mountain to be the country of the dead, and 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 natural holes on its flat top. 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 produced 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 in Utah, near the city of Moab is 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. "Isle in the Sky" is an extended plateau 366 m high, cut by the Colorado River 305 m deep, with the highest point of the White Rim, the Needles Zone is famous for well-preserved clay dwellings and the "stone newspaper" - Newspaper Rock - with petroglyphs carved into 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 2000 BC have been 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 plateau of Mesa Verde, 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 between 400 and 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 - mesas 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 Amba - the so-called table mountains in Africa - rocky plateaus in northern Ethiopia, composed of 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 temples on the tops of rocks, they kept the treasures of the royal dynasty. Mount Geshen is famous for its Lalibela Orthodox Church 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 with ancient rock paintings was discovered on Mount Kundudo. Here is the habitat of the only population of wild horses preserved in the world.
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 an 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, the unique species of which are presented in the Table Mountain National Park.
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. The table mountains of Namibia received their strange names in the Aryan way 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 Bulbin - is part of the array of green Darty mountains. 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 the Ice Age. Once upon a time, a high-altitude plateau was under the thickness of an ancient sea, as evidenced by fossilized marine organisms - shells and 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". 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 of 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.
northern mesas
In the northern latitudes, dining or table-top 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 basalt rocks after cooling.
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 Bird Sanctuary, home to an extensive bird colony of 20,000 pairs of Adélie penguins and 550 pairs of gentoos penguins.
Table Mountain Brown Bluff, Antarctica
On the territory of Canada, mainly in British Columbia, there are whole groups of high mountain plateaus. One of them is the 2021-meter table mountain Table Mountain, standing in the middle of Lake Garibaldi.
Table Mountain The 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 Hayrick Butte Plateau (1683 m) - this is a type of subglacial volcano with absolutely vertical slopes. At a distance of 3 km from it 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 of which belongs to Russia, are subglacial dormant thuja volcanoes in the Bering Strait with a flat top. During the Cold War between the USSR and the USA, Diomedes, between which the state border passes, were symbolically called the "ice curtain".
In contact with
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 were 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 of 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 research by scientists proves that tepui were not as tightly isolated from the environment as previously thought - for example, the endemic tree frog Tepuihyla got to the top of Latin American tepui 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 the report of Robert Schomburk 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 a mysterious mountainous country inhabited by outlandish prehistoric animals.
Roraima Tepui, South America
2.Auantepui. This table mountain is the owner of the highest waterfall in the world - Angel (979 m), falling into a lake with a depth of 807 m. In the language of the indigenous population - Pemon, the waterfall was called Kerepakupai Vena until recently. 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. The local population, the Pemon Indians, consider the lonely standing table mountain to be the country of the dead, and 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 natural holes on its flat top. 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 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, cut by the Colorado channel 305 m deep, with the highest point of White Rim, the Needles Zone is famous for well-preserved clay dwellings of American aborigines and the "stone newspaper" - Newspaper Rock - with carved on rocks with petroglyphs. 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 between 400 and 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 (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 Lalibela Orthodox Church 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 with ancient rock paintings was discovered on Mount Kundudo. 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 an 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. The table mountains of Namibia received their strange names in the Aryan way 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 the 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 basalt 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
On the territory of Canada, mainly in British Columbia, there are whole groups of high mountain plateaus. One of them is the 2021-meter table mountain Table Mountain, standing in the middle of Lake Garibaldi.
Table Mountain The 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 of which belongs to Russia, are subglacial dormant thuja volcanoes in the Bering Strait with a flat top. During the Cold War between the USSR and the USA, Diomedes, between which the state border passes, were symbolically called 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 tropical forests and savannahs 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 in 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.
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: Mysterious Houses of the Gods
Most scientists are convinced that Tepui with steep, almost sheer slopes and “cut” flat peaks are the oldest 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 all kinds of legends, scary and fantastic stories go about tepui. 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.
Its summit plateau of thirty-four square kilometers is 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 small planes 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 canoe across the lagoon, 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 take numerous walks. But all this without fail, accompanied by experienced guides and with strict observance of the rules: this world is still fraught with many unsolved secrets and mysteries.
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 journeys 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, Canaima Natural Park of Venezuela - 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 lands are densely shrouded in a halo of secrets and mysteries, about which Tepui is covered with bizarre rocks that look like 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 of the 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 in addition to animals known to science, a strange creature called the Cadborosaurus (lat. Cadborosaurus willsi) was discovered there. 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 the central square of the 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 (English Empire State Building; 103-storey skyscraper on the 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.
High in the sky there is an island that seems to be floating in the clouds. His landscapes look so unreal that it seems as if it is another planet. Rocks of bizarre shapes and huge strands of waterfalls, stone placers and ponds of different colors, outlandish plants and unusual animals. This is the table mountain of Roraima in South America. She is constantly surrounded by a cloud, so she looks like an island floating in the sky.
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Canteens are called mountains, the tops of which are not pointed, but flat, like a table. And their walls are almost vertical. Such mountains are typical of the Guiana Highlands, and here they are called tepui. They arose from the huge size of the sandstone plateau, which in ancient times stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the basins of three rivers: the Orinoco, the Amazon and the Rio Negro. Over the centuries, the plateau has been eroded and gradually destroyed.
All that is left of him is tepui. It is possible that these mountains are the oldest on our planet. Roraima is the highest mesas in Venezuela. It seems that it is carved from a rock monolith. Its walls rise more than a thousand meters above the Great Savannah. The highest point is at an altitude of 1810 m, huge cracks radiate from it.
For more information about the Canaima National Park in Venezuela, read our article. In addition to Mount Roraima, there are many other unique attractions here.
Venezuela accounts for three-quarters of the mountain, and it is here that the gentle slope is located. This is where the climbs to Roraima begin. The rest with steep slopes is located on the territory of two other countries: Brazil and Guyana.
Where the gods live
The table mountains turned out to be a convenient place for the gods to live. After all, translated from the local dialect, tepui means "house of the gods." Mount Roraima has always been of particular importance to the inhabitants of the Great Savannah. And many myths and legends were composed about it. According to one of the legends, it is believed that a huge tree grew on the site of the mountain, from which all the fruits on earth went. But one of the heroes of myths cut it down, leaving only a stump in the form of Mount Roraima. According to another legend, a goddess named Queen lived upstairs, from whom the human race began.
Roraima translates as "great blue-green mountain". She has always been shrouded in mystery. Only a few daredevils tried to climb it. The indigenous people of the savannah do not do this, fearing the wrath of evil spirits. Moreover, these places are called cursed. And there is a reason for this: the plateau constantly attracts lightning. The entire surface of the mountain is dotted with their blows.
Visiting a fairy tale
Roraima is always surrounded by clouds, through which the outlines of the cliffs are visible. This amazing picture creates a certain mystery and excites the imagination of travelers.
At the top, the feeling that you are in a science fiction film, a fairy tale or on another planet does not leave. Everything looks so unreal. Rocks of the most unusual and amazing shapes amaze the imagination. Some of them look like strange mushrooms, others look like fairytale castles and unusual figures. Sometimes there are placers of stones that seem to have arrived from other planets. Somewhere you can see huge crevices into which several rivers merge. Long streams of water fall from high rocks. Due to constant rains and high humidity, the surface of these rocks is covered with small algae, so they turn black. And where there are no algae, the true color of sandstone appears - bright pink. This gives the landscape an even more unrealistic look.
One fifth of the plateau's surface is water. Rivers, the bottom of which sparkles with the radiance of rock crystal, puddles of an extraordinary bright pink color, clear lakes with clear water, peat bogs. There are even small ponds in the form of bathtubs and jacuzzis.
These cosmic landscapes have inspired many filmmakers to use them in films and cartoons. Like, for example, Steven Spielberg, who filmed the science fiction film Jurassic Park on Roraima.
When to go
The higher you climb the mountain, the colder and wetter it gets. In the mornings, the temperature can drop to 0 degrees, despite the warm tropical climate below. It often rains on the plateau, sometimes for several days in a row. The rainy season lasts from May to October. During this period of time, there is a risk of seeing only fog on the mountain. But there are few tourists and many flowers, especially orchids.
Wonderful world of plants and animals
Most of the flora and fauna are endemic. That is, those who live directly in this limited area and develop in isolation from the rest. Therefore, they are as unusual as the local landscapes. Due to the frequent rains that wash away the soil, there is not much vegetation. There are only islands of greenery with small trees similar to bonsai. In peat bogs, you can see outlandish flowers, moss carpets and plants that eat insects. The slopes of the mountain are decorated with ferns and gunners that look like huge burdocks.
The animal world is represented by lizards and scorpions, mice and noses, leeches and spiders. Many of them, including insects, are black in color. The most amazing are stone frogs. They are very small - literally a little over a centimeter. They do not jump, as usual, but crawl. But if on the way there is a danger in the form of a spider or a scorpion, then they fall down like a stone. They also know how to whistle before the rain.
Secrets of table mountain
For a long time, Roraima remained an unexplored land. Few dared to climb to the top. Yes, and it was not easy to do this due to the fact that the slopes of the mountain are vertical, and they are surrounded by dense tropical forests. Only a few brave Indians made the difficult path through enchanted forests and impenetrable swamps. And then they talked about extraordinary lands with colored waters in the rivers. All this seemed incredible, and no one took these stories seriously.
It also happened to European explorers, who first officially began to study this area in 1835. These were the scientists Robert Schomburk and Yves Cerne. The public laughed at them. And she took as fiction reports that contained descriptions of rivers with colored water, unusual animals and plants. The same thing happened with subsequent expeditions. Who could believe in such a fairy tale?
But these studies inspired the famous writer Arthur Conan Doyle. And he wrote the fantastic work "The Lost World". True, he also settled dinosaurs in these places. Only in the 1960s were the works of the next expedition to Roraima seriously studied. This time, the participants met giant ants, black frogs that hatched eggs, a huge 15-meter snake with a strange head shape.
At one site of unknown purpose, a strange metal powder was found. His chemical analysis showed that it is impossible to obtain such a substance under terrestrial conditions. Therefore, there is a version of space aliens. In confirmation of this, in the labyrinths of quartz caves on Roraima, there are rock paintings depicting strange animals and even humanoids. So the mountain still has many secrets.
How to get to the mountain
Many adventurers come to Venezuela to see this wonderful world with their own eyes. And who can resist such a temptation how to get into a completely different reality without leaving our planet?
Dozens of tourists climb the mountain every day. Since Roraima is part of the Canaima National Park, you can only climb it with a guide. One is not allowed, it is too risky. During the ascent, you can get into a dense fog of high density, so you need to be careful.
The porters are Pemon Indians, very friendly and sociable locals. They carry tents, food, and you only carry personal belongings. The Indians also cook food, bring tourists down if there is a need to return. You can also carry all the equipment yourself, then the rise will cost less.