Canadian World Traveller Winter 2018-19 Issue

We heard the rush of the massive
waterfall before we saw
it. We were walking down a
rainforest path in a remote national
park, just a small group of visitors with
two local guides, snaking between towering
trees and occasional luminous blue
butterflies the size of my hand.
My heart was pounding. My Guyanese
friend Wesley had told me about
Kaieteur, often called the world’s largest
single-drop waterfall. Its broad waters
plunge off a ledge straight down without
hitting another spot along the way,
falling 741 feet in one swoop – or roughly
the height of a 74-story building.
That’s four times taller than Niagara
Falls on the US-Canada border. Yet
Kaieteur receives only about 8,000 visitors
per year, compared to over 7 million
at Niagara. I was thrilled to be so near.
Wesley and I had set out from the capital
of this former British colony in South
America early morning to board a 17-
passenger plane. The pilot flew 11 of us
more than an hour over miles and miles
of greenery - first plains, then hills and
highlands. The virgin forests below
looked like broccoli plantations, the tops
tufted like florets. Sinewy ribbons of
chocolate-colored rivers sometimes
peeked through the trees.
From the air, we glimpsed some small
waterfalls, but suddenly, as if out of
nowhere, emerged Kaieteur, gushing
down golden-brown, enormous. The
nearly black Potaro River spilled over a
wide cliff, and the water dropped into a
gorge, mists rising and rainbows too. I
gasped, elated.
We circled with the plane, but Kaieteur
retreated into the tropical forest. I was
eager to see it without light reflecting off
the plane window and without the hum
of propellers drowning out nature’s
music.
Within minutes, we landed on a dirt
airstrip, the only plane in sight. Just off
the runway was a small wooden building
with a sign for Kaeiteur National Park.
We meandered over to meet our guides,
Candace Evans and Lincoln Pereira, both
in their 20s and from indigenous communities
nearby.
Candace instructed us to stay on the
trails, and at lookout points, to keep at
least eight feet away from the edge of the
rocky slabs above the gorge hundreds of
feet below us. Kaieteur has no safety
rails, aiming to remain as pristine as
possible. “Please don’t try to prove yourself,”
she requested.
We’d walked only a few minutes when
Candace pointed out something I’d
never seen: “carnivorous” plants. The
reddish groundcover secretes a substance
that attracts mosquitos and other
bugs. “When the insects come, they stick
on, and the plant eats them. So, we don’t
use mosquito repellent here but have it
naturally,” she joked.
Soon, after navigating steps and rocky
paths, I heard it: the rush of Kaieteur, a
strong and constant whir, not threatening
but somehow life-affirming, almost meditative.
We followed the sound. At the first
lookout, I saw the caramel waters pour
over the ample ledge. Two furrows
crossed into a white-capped “V” near the
top, reminding me of a heart, perhaps
the heart of Mother Nature herself.
Our guides told us the dark color of the
water came from tannins in the roots of
the trees by the river, a tributary of the
Essequibo and part of the greater
Amazon basin.
The name, Kaieteur, may well come from
legend, Candace explained. The story
goes there was an old man, or Kaie in
the Patamona language. He was chief of
a tribe engaged in a bitter war with the
Carib tribe. The chief threw himself over
the falls, or Teur, in an act of self-sacrifice
to stop the war. “Don’t repeat yourself,
and say Kaieteur Falls,” or Old-Man-
Falls Falls, she advised. “Say Kai Falls or
Kaieteur.”
In all, we spent about two hours near
Kaieteur, stopping at three lookouts, the
closest one to the water called “Rainbow
View” for the swirls of light that appear in
its mists. Our timing was good: In late
spring and summer, the river hits its peak
flow, expanding to cover more of the
rocky ledge. The waters widen up to
some 390 feet – a distance longer than a
soccer or U.S. football field, bigger than
I’d imagined.
The trails proved a revelation too.
Candace showed us the woody vines
named “cufa,” used to make furniture,
and “capadula,” boiled to make an
aphrodisiac dubbed the local Viagra. We
saw flowers blooming in purple, pink
and white and others jutting out spiky
red. My heart was full.
Others in our group felt similar joy, as we
headed back to the airstrip. “I was telling
my son: The flight alone was worth it for
the view from overhead,” said Shanta
Lall, 57, a homemaker from Guyana on
her first visit to Kaieteur. “This is a
bonus,” she said, after gazing at the falls
head-on, the air moist and fresh.
We stopped at the national park center
for water and snacks, chatting contentedly,
before flying out. A small exhibit
identified the hand-size butterflies I’d
seen as iridescent Blue Morphos, South
America’s largest. We also learned that
Angel Falls – located just west in neighboring
Venezuela – is taller but thinner
than Kaieteur, sending far less water in its
gorge and producing a less powerful
sound.
Wesley was relaxed, proud to share his
country’s top natural attraction with me.
“Coming here,” he said, “you can forget
what day of the week it is, what time of
the day it is.”
On the flight back, we circled Kaieteur
again as if to bid farewell, then descended
from the highlands to the plains and
the city. The excursion took only a morning
but created a memory for a lifetime.