Georgetown

Guyana

February 1, 2018

My journey to Guyana concludes with a flight to visit Kaieteur Falls.

Here are a few statistics for Kaieteur:

• Sheer Drop of 226 meters or 741 feet
• Maximum Width of 122m or 400 feet
• Flow of Water: 136, 200 liters or 35,980 gallons per second

To put this in perspective, Kaieteur is five times higher than Niagara Falls.

The Kaieteur description in my Itinerary:

From the Eugene F. Correia International Airport take a scheduled flight over the Demerara and Essequibo Rivers and hundreds of miles of unbroken tropical rainforest to land at Kaieteur Falls, the world’s highest free-falling waterfall.

Kaieteur Falls which was first seen by a European on April 29, 1870 is situated in the heart of Guyana on the Potaro River, a tributary of the Essequibo. The water of Kaieteur, one of the

World’s natural wonders, flows over a sandstone conglomerate tableland into a deep gorge – a drop of 741 feet or 5 times the height of Niagara Falls.

There are no other falls in the world with the magnitude of the sheer drop existing at Kaieteur. 

Amerindian legend of the Patamona tribe has it that Kai, one of the tribe’s chiefs (after whom the falls is named), committed self-sacrifice by canoeing himself over the falls.  It was believed this would encourage the Great Spirit Makonaima to save the tribe from being destroyed by the savage Caribishi.

Kaieteur supports a unique micro environment with Tank Bromeliads, the largest in the world, in which the tiny Golden frog spends its entire life, and the rarely seen Guiana Cock-of-the-rock nesting close by. The lucky visitor may also see the famous flights of the Kaieteur Swifts or Makonaima Birds which nest under the vast shelf of rock carved by the centuries of water, hidden behind the eternal curtain of falling water.

I am just lucky to be here.

Please excuse me if I struggle to invent a unique phrase or quote some cliché expression to describe this wonderful site.

Photographs must replace words.