Discover the wonders of Latin America !

1. VenezuelaHelga design

5. The highest tepui in the Venezuelan Gran Sabana is Roraima, 2,810 metres, on the border with Brazil and Guyana. The name is a Pemón Indian word meaning ‘The large and ever-fruitful Mother of the streams”. Its 44 square mile plateau was first climbed by the English botanist Everard Im Thurn on an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society in 1884, and it was his subsequent lectures in England, together with those of Colonel P H Fawcett on the Serra Ricardo Franco range in Brazil, that are believed to have been the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Lost World

10. These sedimentary rocks, up to 3,000m deep, were laid down over 2 billion years ago as the ancient continent of Pangea was eroded by thousands of years of incessant rain, and remained unsubmerged as Gondwanaland was split apart under the forces of Continental Drift to form Africa and the South America. It is sobering to think that when the first plant life appeared these rocks were already at least 1.4 billion years old.