Mount Roraima Trek

Coffee before the tents come down, then away before eight. Seven kilometres and around four hours, but the savanna gives way to sustained climbing and the day is harder than its distance suggests. Ford the Tek and then the Kukenán, both waist deep after rain, before the trail bends toward the base of the wall. Base camp sits in cloud forest directly beneath the Ramp, close enough that the waterfalls coming off the plateau are audible through the night.

The hardest day. Depart at half past eight and climb the Ramp, a natural diagonal ledge cut into the cliff and the only route to the top that does not require ropes. The path runs under waterfalls falling clear off the rim, and the vegetation changes with every hundred metres of gain. Reach the plateau before two and eat lunch on the summit. In the late afternoon walk out to Maverick Rock at 2,810 metres, the highest point on the mountain, then return to camp. Three nights are spent up here, in the sandstone shelters the guides call hotels.

A full day and roughly seventeen kilometres return to the Triple Point, the concrete marker where the borders of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet on open rock. The route crosses La Fosa and the Crystal Valley on the Brazilian side, where quartz crystals lie loose across the ground in fields. Nothing may be removed from the plateau, crystals included. Lunch is taken back at camp on return.

A day given entirely to the plateau. The jacuzzis, rock basins of black water fed by rain and stained by tannin. The southern Crystal Valley. La Ventana, a notch in the rim that looks out over the savanna two kilometres below. El Abismo, where the cloud usually sits and occasionally clears. This is the terrain that holds the endemics, the pebble toad that rolls itself into a ball and falls rather than hops away, and the sun pitcher plants that trap insects in the nutrient-poor rock.

Down the Ramp after breakfast and out across the rivers, around seven hours of walking with lunch at base camp on the way through. The descent is harder on the knees than the climb was on the lungs, and the last two hours cross open savanna in full afternoon sun. Dinner at the Tek River camp, with the mountain behind you for the first time in five days.

Wake at five, packed by six, breakfast and then the walk back to Paraitepui where the 4x4 is waiting with a snack. Arrive in Santa Elena de Uairén around three in the afternoon.