ANGEL FALL or KEREPAKUPAI MERU.
Where the name comes from.
The legend says that the name Angel Falls derives from the miraculous saintly figure that once appeared to a Pemon Indian in the mist of cascade water. But the truth far from heavenly is as mundane as the search for gold and diamonds in this rich land. Back in 1921 the Canadian First World War pilot Jimmy Angel was hired by geologist and explorer of name J. R. McCracken, to search for gold where none had gone before. It was so that Jimmy Angel reached without map the area known today as Canaima and managed to land his plane on top of one of the Tepuis. McCracken proceeded out of the plane to pan a river and find it full of gold nuggets. The story goes that they loaded so much on the plane that when it nosed off the cliff it plunged a thousand of feet before Angel could level it. As they returned to Caracas Jimmy was paid the generous sum of 3000$. Angel became obsessed with the Rivers of Gold, but without the proper map it was hard to find his mountain. It wasn’t till 1933 that Angel while at his favorite Caracas bar claimed to have seen the highest waterfall in the world. He said that his altimeter read around 6.000 ft. A mile high waterfall. On a later flight, in 1937 Angel attempted landing on the Auyan-Tepui, but his small Flamingo plane, the ´Rio Caroní´ didn’t make it, and together with his wife and a Venezuelan explorer took him eleven days to find a way down the mountain, eventually reaching the Kamarata mission. Jimmy died in 1956, his ashes were scattered over the falls, and in 1970, the Venezuelan Air Force rescued the rusting ´Rio Caroní´ from the top of the Auyan. The true name given by the Pemons: Kerepakupai means the deepest place, and Meru means falls.
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