Here in venezuela the buses are freezing cold. They pump the air condition to full throttle for some seemingly arbitrary reason. So we arrived Santa Elena wednesday morning after a long cold night. First priority was to get some coffee and some of those venezuelan fried bread that is so good and so cheap and so not healthy. Picutre below:

Immediately we met Fransisco, a tour operator with his office right there on the bus terminal. While he was telling us his options for a Roraima trek, a crazy french american arrived out of nowhere, and he joined us to make a small group of 3 on our tabletop mountain adventure. Roraima is a tabletop mountain. Billions of years ago it was a part of a vast plane which with the years have eroded away, only leaving a few mountains left, Roraima being one of those. We had three choices with Fransisco: 1:Going on a full package with porters carrying our stuff, food, equipment and guide included. 2:Carrying all the stuff ourselves, food, equipment and guide included. 3: Only guide and transport. We settled on the second option. Obviously we wanted to carry our own stuff being to young to need help from porters, and at the same time it was considerably cheaper. Lacking equipment the 3rd option was out of the question. Checked in on the cheapest hostel in Santa Elena and chilled for the rest of the day saving up energy for the next days trek. We changed money on the black market, and when we got back to the hostel and was going to pay for the trip (1900 BsF each), we discovered that there were missing 400 BsF; about 50 USD. Somehow the guys had ripped us off, even though we were cautiously counting the money and paying attention when we changed them.

Day one: After making arepas for breakfast and packing up all our stuff we were amazed to see all the food we were going to carry. Fransisco had informed us beforehand that he was going to give us about 10kg each of food to carry, but we didn´t realize the food was going to consist of loads of white bread, cucumbers, serials and soforth. So we with our small backpacks had some problems packing all the spatious food into them but after leaving a glassjar of ketchup we were ready to go. We started the walk towards the towering mountain around noon, after an hour and a half in a jeep from santa elena to the small indigenous village of Paraitepui, where all the Roraimatreks go from. The area there is that of a vast savana, and it is actually called the "gran sabana". Lots of green hills, and fresh rivers carves through the landscape and make it a beautiful scene in good weather. After passing the camp of Rio Tek some 3 hours down the road that weather left us and we were stuck in some pretty heavy rainfall. Rushing towards camp Kukenan to cross a couple of rivers before the grew to big we realized that perhaps it was better to just chill the rest of the day and do a hard trek the next morning. Usually the trek up to the summit of Roraima is undertaken in 3 days: first day to Rio Tek or Kukenan, second to Base camp and third day to the summit. We wanted more time on the top so we had long since decided to do the trek in 2 days, giving us 3 whole days on the actual top. Stopping in Kukenan meant that we would have to walk Kukenan to summit the next day and that we would get a pretty easy first day letting the body adapt to the walking after a month and a half travelling on our asses on boats, buses and cars. Took a swim in the river next to the camp and our guide, Omar, made us dinner. Chicken and rice tasted surprisingly well, and we crawled into our tent at around 7pm for a really early night.

Day two: It was dusk already at 0530 so we got up and out and a beautiful morning view of the tabletop moutains met us. Mount Kukenan is Roraimas twin standing right next to it with a small valley in between, and the two looking mystic and beautiful in the morning light of the sunrise. Omar made us some incredibly filling and tasty and not healthy dumplings for breakfast, we packed all our stuff and were off at about 7am. The sun was beating down already at 7 o´clock and it was a hot trek upwards towards the base of the mountain. After about an hour and 45 minutes we reached basecamp and Eirik went on without taking a break. I stopped and waited for Harry the french american and our guide before continuing, resting my legs before the hard incline up to the summit, a thousand meters above the camp. The trek so far had been upwards slightly the whole way from camp Kukenan still in the savannas, but from camp base we adventured into the rainforest that surrounds the cloudy and rainy cliffs of the mountain. Frequent precipitation here caused by the rapidly rising mountain makes the jungle dense and wet. And wet it was, as we encountered rain an hour from basecamp. Kept on going on the very steep trail upwards under the impressing 600meter cliff, getting utterly soaked as we went. We eventually found shelter under a waterfall and stopped to wait for our guide and better weather. Hadn´t seen Eirik since base camp and both Harry and I was hoping that he had put up the tent and made food for us at the top, both being soaked and cold. Continiued with Omar when he arrived, met Eirik 5 minutes up the hill where he had been waiting for an hour and a half, and suddently the sun broke through the fog and gave us some comfortable heat. 20 minutes later we were at our hotel, an overhang of rock where we put up our tent and hung our clothes up for drying. Got some beautiful view from the cliffs seing out over the savannas in the evening sun.

When the sun went down through the clouds to the west and the darkness took over, there was not much more to do than to climb into our tent and go to bed, with the rain starting to fall over our cave, 2700 meters above sea level.

Day three: We went to bed late dusk and got up early dawn. Fog was covering everything and the humid weather definately hadn´t dried our clothes, but rather the opposite. So after breakfast we gathered strength to put on our cold wet clothes, socks and shoes, before we commenced the long walk towards the tripple point. That´s where the borders of Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela meet, on top of the mountain. We used two hours to get there, and the walk over was that of another world. The classic book of "the lost world" is based on the landscapes on top of Roraima, and walking around on the tabletop mountain really proved that this is a lost world. The mist increasing and decreasing every minute, along with the oddly shaped rock formations created by millions of years of erotion from wind and rain, creates mystical shadows and forms that easily can mistaken for humans, animals, trolls or dinosaurs. To everybody that has seen the movie "Up", I can tell you that the top of these mountains look exactly like that! Wierd plants that eats insect because of a lack of nutritions and stonelike looking frogs that walks like spiderman adds to the uniqueness of this place. Theese plants and animals don´t live anywhere else on the planet, tey´re endemic to the one tabletop mountain and we found that to be pretty fascinating! Getting to the trippleborder we took the usual pictures that we take wherever we roam, ate lunch and visited to a sinkhole before returning to out hotel. Having walked six hours, we ate some lunch and were off again, this time to the halfhour away viewpoint of "the window". The window was closed as they say, meaning that the view was thoroughly blocked by the covering clouds. On the way back we visited some natural jacuzzies where we took a bath. It surely sounds a lot warmer than it was! That evening we again got a beautiful view from the southward cliff, close to where we had our camp, and we sat there drinking coffee and enjoying the view for a while before returning to camp to eat the dinner Omar had prepared for us. The positioning of the mountain and the winds makes this south cliff ofter open for views, while the more impressing views of the window usually are closed caused by some constant clouds between mount kukenan and roraima. Upon going to bed at the usual 630pm we decided to try the window view again early next morning, hoping for a hole in the clouds.

Day four: Got up early alright, but everything around us was grey and wet and we quickly realized there was no hope for any views from the window this morning. We asked Omar if there were some other cool stuff we hadn´t seen on the top and he told us about a cave 30 minutes away and off we were. The cave was a quite normal cave carved out by the running of water, and we climbed in the first 100 meters. Due to the poor wildlife on the mountaintop the cave didn´t have any cool birds, fishes or bats inside. We took a swim in the water there and got some fotoes before exiting out to the foggy world again. Not the most impressing cave, but still cool to climb into the darkness for a while. Walked back to camp and after lunch the weather seemed to clear up, our cue to run over to the window. We were there in 15 minutes but it was too late, the window was closed. Still got a good view from the northside cliff in between the clouds. Harry had gotten tougher and tougher throughout the trip, fighting his fear for heights, and we managed to get some cool pictures of him on the 600meter cliff edge. Got some naked jumping pictures in the jacuzzies, even washing ourselves with soap before returning once again to camp. After theese days of intense hiking had made my right knee quite soar and when we went to bed on the fourth day I was getting worried about how the descent the next day was going to be like, descents being known for killing knees. We had talked to Omar about what to do, because we didnt want to leave the mountain before we could get a view out of the window, but he wanted to stick to plan and thus we decided that he was going to leave us at 7am and that we would walk down on our own midday.

Day five: I woke up in the middle of the night with some stomach cramps and an hour later I was barfing all over the place. Ended up not sleeping a second and both Eirik and Harry was worried and just waited to get sick themselves. That didn´t happen though, so in the morning they were off to the window while I tried to get some sleep in between my toilet runs. Luck finally struck, and we got an open window this morning, and I was happy to see the pictures the guys had taken when they returned to camp after a couple of hours.

We packed our stuff, Eirik carrying most of the load and I almost not carrying anything being crippled. Walked down the steep trail we had ascended 3 days before slowly and I had learned to walk without pain in my knee. The view going down was incredible with the mist covering the top of the cliffs and the vastness of the savannas beneath us. Took us two hours to get to base camp, and we almost became two cripplings after Eirik twisted his knee with the weight of the tent, the food and all our crap on his back, but he was ok. The crap he was carrying actually was crap. So many tourists to this fragile ecosystem on the top has forced the autorities to ban human waste there. So we had to poo in bags, tie them up and carry them down the mountain. And I can say this much, it was quite a lot! Eirik took one for the team and carried the s***bags down the mountain. Thanks Eirik! We were so lucky with the weather as we walked on the dry trail with scattered clouds over us, protecting us from the burning sun. Arriving at the camp kukenan where we had slept on the way up, we successfully crossed the river, only getting our pants soaked before taking a bath that felt healing to our bodies. Carried on to camp Rio Tek where we spent the fifth night. Got some beautiful views of the Kukenan mountain in the dusk, and the 610 meter Kukenan falls looked almost like angel falls with all the water that had fallen the night before. Swam in the Rio Tek after eating dinner and again we were in bed by 630. On this trip sunset meant bedtime for the 3 of us.

Day six: After seing the sun rise over Roraima, a beautiful view, and eating the lovely dumplings again we were on our way back to Paraitepui and the car back to santa elena. 3 hours walking later we were in the car. A beautiful morning to walk on the savannas in, listening to music and ponder about things and daydreaming the whole way. Eirik got lucky and saw a meter long snake in a creek nearby Paraitepui, our first encounted with wild snakes so far on this trip. Hopefully not the last, we both feel that an anaconda is awaiting us somewhere along the next 6 months. Ate lunch in San Fransisco before driving back to Santa Elena where we found out that there was no direct buses to Caracas before the next day. Said goodbye to Harry that was directly going back to Isla Margarita where he lives, saw a football match on Tv before we went to bed.