Saturday, January 14, 2006

4:10 p.m. I'm in the Atlanta Airport terminal with Jim Valentine waiting on our flight to Caracas . I had a sad parting with my beloved Kathy at the Tallahassee Airport an hour ago. Now begins the six-week journey to tepui land to get photographs for a book on tepuis and to get some video footage of tepuis that might be the basis of a documentary film about them.

~ 9:30 p.m. Amazing! I told Jim when we entered the Atlanta International terminal that we needed to adjust our head-clocks to “mañana-time,” and what do you know? We got boarded on our plane for Caracas about 5:20 —the flight due to take off at 5:30 —and mañana set in immediately. In spite of the captain's repeated pleas for everyone to get seated so we could take off on time, we didn't get away from the terminal gate until 6:30, apparently over a problem with a couple of passengers who didn't seem to have a plane ticket. We then taxied down the runway for a while, stopped, and then returned to the gate, with the captain saying that they were called back for a “baggage mixup.” When we got to the gate, Delta officials boarded and again questioned the family who didn't seem to have tickets, taking their passport numbers and going off for a while. We were then told that the reason we had returned to the gate was because there was 134 passengers on board instead of the 133 that they had a manifest for. Eventually, when we were released to leave the terminal again, the captain came on and said we had had a “baggage foul-up,” whatever that means. I suspect the problem was really related to the strange mixup with the mystery passengers. We finally got airborne about 7:30 , TWO hours late!

I'm tired and apprehensive about the next few hours. I'll feel relieved when we pass through customs with all our gear. We have nine bags full of stuff. Jim has three check-ons, necessitating a $100 extra bag charge and I have two large check-on bags, each overweight. I had to pay $25 each for that. Each of us has two carry-ons, and Jim's are quite large. Both of us have our expensive camera equipment in these bags.

We were told on the plane that a bridge on the main highway up to Caracas is out, so the drive, which normally takes 45 minutes, now takes 3 or more hours. And the taxis charge more than twice the amount to make the trip. We do not have to go up into Caracas , thank goodness, so our option is to stay in a hotel near the airport. Alas, we were also told that all the hotels are booked because of the highway bridge. What we are prepared to do—and fervently hope we will be able to do it—is to stay overnight in the Maiquetia Airport . If we can do this, and if we get through customs without any hitches, my anxiety will be extinguished and will begin looking forward to this trip with much enthusiasm.

The flight to Caracas from Atlanta takes about 3 1/2 hours.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

We arrived at Maiquetia Airport about midnight and were pleasantly surprised when we had no difficulty passing through customs and immigration. Before we left the bcaggage claim area, however we learned that we could take up a position on the polished terrazzo floor for the night. We were besieged by hand-truck operators who wanted to take our bags for us, but because we were not going anywhere, we hired none. We just blew up our Thermarest mattresses and slept uncomfortably on the hard floor for about three hours.

We learned that the National Terminal, about a five-minute walk away from the International Terminal, opened at about 5:00 a.m. , so at 4:30 we woke up and readied to hire a porter to help us with our baggage to a ticket counter in the National Terminal. I exchanged $400 US for Bolivares (at 2200 Bs per dollar!) with a black market money-changer in the terminal and we hired a man to transport our gear to the National Terminal. I paid him $20,000 Bs (about $10 US) for the work, then lost another $20,000 in a money exchange with a fash-handed money changer at the ticket counter of Aeropostal.

The Aeropostal ticket counter was difficult. There were aggressive money-changers busy soliciting our help, making us believe that they were employees of Aeropostal. {I don't know why Aeropostal doesn't clean this annoying business from in front of their ticket stations. When I finally got to a check-in girl, she said that the noon flight was full and we could only fly on standby. We sort of panicked, not knowing what to do, so after mulling around and trying to get rid of the money-changers, who were swarming around in our face. One guy said he could get us confirmed on the noon flight for $50 US. I smelled a rat and went back to our original ticket girl. I asked her in my pidgin Spanish if there were any other flights to Puerto Ordaz today, and so she played with her computer for a while, then said she could get us on a flight leaving at 11:30 a.m. ! I said I'd take it, and purchased tickets for an 11:30 departure. I had to pay an extra 114,000 Bs for the excess baggage using my Visa. After accepting my Amex, they wouldn't take it again for the excess baggage charge!:?

We got our 5 big bags checked, paid the airport tax (35,000 for both of us), and then entered the land of no return by passing through the security checkpoint,which was almost as stringent as those in the US . Alas, I forgot to put my pocket knife in my check-on baggage, so I walked it back to the ticket counter and gave it to our check-in girl, who seemed to appreciate it very much. Back in the gate area, Jim and I had our first taste of real Venezuela when we had a fresh-squeezed orange juice and a delicious jamon y queso arepa. It was yummy! Now comes the long five-hour wait until 11:30 a.m. when our flight takes off for Pto. Ordaz.

9:23 a.m. I found an electrical outlet in the airport terminal and discovered that it had the same configuration as an American outlet. That's good news, that I don't have to have an adapter for my equipment. I've been dozing off and on while watching my computer as it gets charged. I had a scare about the computer. It took me about 5 minutes of playing around with the off/on switch to get the thing turned on. I was wondering if the electromagnetic radiation that they shot through it while I passed through two security checks might have had something to do with its malfunctioning. The good news is that, when I get it fully charged, I will only put it to sleep by shutting the lid, not requiring that I reboot it to start up.. Jim's asleep on the floor and I am dozing off and on in the chair nearest to the window. Outside is a beautiful, clear day. I can see about 8 Aeropostal planes sitting on the tarmac in varying stages of preparation for a future flight.

7:00 p.m. Wheew! All our travel woes are over (I hope). I'm sitting on my bed in the Residencias Torre in Puerto Ordaz. Jim and I got here about 1:30 p.m. after an hour's flight from Maiquetia Airport . The weather was building with small convective clouds, so our view of the ground was intermittent. We flew over the ocean for about half the way here, then turned inland over some relatively non-mountainous terrain. We got our baggage intact at the terminal and were relieved to have gotten all our bags, apparently without any pilfering of items even though the bags were unlocked.

Meeting us at the airport was Freddy, a nice young man who runs an ecotour business and is hooked up with Raul Helicopteros. Freddy has a very nice Toyota Land Cruiser 4WD vehicle in which we will make the trip to Santa Elena de Uairen. We had Freddy take us to a barbecue place and we ate the most delicious meal of parilla—barbecued beef. We had very tender steak grilled medium rare, and all we could eat. The side dishes were boiled yucca (manioc) and assorted grilled vegetables. We couldn't have had a more splendid meal to inaugurate our arrival, and we were hungry, having eaten only an arepa very early in the morning.

I was quite thrilled to discover that Freddy originally came from Puerto Ayacucho and he grew up knowing my old friend Delfin Sanchez. Freddy told me the gruesome details of Delfin's demise. Delfin had made some repairs to his outboard motor and was cranking it out in the middle of the Orinoco River when it cranked up and somehow caught Delfin off balance. Delfin fell into the river but tried to get back in the boat, which was going round and round. While holding onto the gunnel he lost his grip and was horribly injured when the blade of the motor chewed him up. He was rescued from the water by a colleague in another boat, but he was so far away from a hospital—and no helicopter was available to rescue him—that he died from bleeding to death. Freddy knows everybody I knew in Puerto Ayacucho, including Pepe Jaimes, who is still living. So, too, is Otilio Turon, as far as Freddy knows.

We decided to get up tomorrow at 5:00 a.m. and have Freddy drive us to Santa Elena. We will have to pay $130 for each of two days, one going in and one for his return to Pto. Ordaz. Freddy is quite knowledgeable about the sights to see in La Gran Sabana, and tries to entice us into hiring him for more than one day's sight-seeing and photographing. We could have left for Santa Elena today and driven halfway, staying in a hotel on La Gran Sabana. We elected to stay over in Pto. Ordaz, however, to clean up, rest up, and get our gear sorted and ready to go in the morning. That way, Freddy will only charge us one day's going rather than two. I like Freddy and may use his services in the future.

Freddy deposited us in Residencias Tore, a small touristic hotel in a suburban area of Pto. Ordaz. We had a most delicious shower and I washed out my travel clothes while showering. Jim busied himself organizing his photography equipment as did I, and then we took a 30-minute nap. About 7:00 p.m. we attempted to have a snack and drink across the street in a small restaurant, but they were closed for Sunday. So, we are sitting in the room killing time. We will get a good night's sleep tonight for an all-day trip tomorrow. I made a telephone call to my beloved Kathy, and was outraged when presented with a bill for $18 for only about five minutes of talking. I must not use hotel phones to call her again!

Goodnight dear world. We are off on a new expedition and I am now looking forward to the adventure.

Monday, 1/16/2006

Freddy Vergara of picked us up at our hotel, the Residencias Torre, at 5:00 a.m. sharp. We were on the road to Santa Elena de Uairen in the dark hours before dawn. Freddy turns out to be quite an interesting young man of 32 who has had much experience guiding ecotours since he was about 15 or 16. I was particularly engaged with him conversationally because he knew all the players in Puerto Ayacucho, my old stomping grounds.

We drove well past sunrise and then stopped for a great breakfast of arepas with cheese at a little stop called El Cintillo on Highway 10, also known as Transamazonica Road (because it goes all the way to Manaus). Freddy pointed out a new road running north into a virgin rainforest in the far NE corner of Venezuela . He knows of the active nest of a Harpy Eagle there at this moment. It is a good birding road and worth visiting for birds. Freddy told me of a great place for the bushmaster. It is a place he calls Yunek, between Camarata and Santa Elena. He thinks it would be an ideal place to do a radiotelemetry study of the snake.

We passed through Las Claritas, El Dorado , and Km 88, all of which have grown a lot since my last visit with Kathy in about 1992. We reached the foot of La Escalera at 10:00 a.m. and drove up to Km 103, at a site on the righthand side of the road which leads uphill to a lookout over the virgin rainforest north of Sierra Lema, with the long escarpment called Sierra Lema stretching out across the horizon. Apparently the high lookout we were standing on is part of Sierra Lema.

To reach the lookout, we walked up a bare granite slope with seepage water flowing over parts of it. Immediately I found dozens of small (size of a quarter) frogs that I believe are a species of Adenomera. I caught and photographed four then turned them loose and soon found the much larger adults under large, flat pieces of exfoliating granite. I caught and photographed one of the adults. This species has a red wash over the skin of the under-thighs. Under another rock I found a Leptodactylus with a bold, yellow dorsolateral fold. It looked superficially much like a Rana sphenocephala. I took two photographs of it, but they didn't turn out because the frog jumped and escaped before I got my pop-up flash to work. I saw an Ameiva-like lizard under one rock, but I was unable to catch it.

There are huge tank bromeliads along the seepages here. I thought I saw eggs of a cf. Colostethus in the axils of several leaves on several plants. Once I thought I saw the frog, itself, but I am not sure of it. I trashed about ten of the large bromeliads, including pushing over about five to see what came out, but I found no tadpoles, frogs, or other interesting animals and only one very tiny dragonfly nymph. These are some of the largest tank bromeliads I have ever seen, though. The site is not far from where I found the huge earthworm when I drove up La Escalera with Kathy.

We next drove to a sacred waterfall of the Pemon Indians called Sakaika Falls and stayed for an hour and a half, photographing the falls. I wandered around and found a Tropidurus and a bat in an abandoned churuata. The drive in went through a waterhole so deep that the water came up onto the top of Freddy's hood.

We stopped to get gasoline at a Pemon Indian run facility, which also had a restaurant. Since it was after midday and we hadn't had any lunch, we ordered what I thought was going to be a light meal. I had a half of a roasted chicken and with the side dishes, got stuffed. Freddy says the Pemons have learned to do business on their tribal lands with tourists and are faring well for it.

It was about 4:30 when we offloaded and the skies were looking like they might cloud-up again. The sun was setting behind the true summit just west of us, so we were about to be out of direct light well before true sunset. I realized that the most urgent thing we needed to do was to get our tents up. Well, good luck! The ground everywhere you look is deep in squishy peat, with water oozing up into your boots at every step. I couldn’t see any chance for ground on which to put tents, so I walked into a gnarled and stunted Bonnetia roraimae forest and kicked around looking for a tent site. I found one—ONE, that is. I kicked, snapped, and pulled at plants for about 30 minutes, then had a place for a tent with broken plant parts about a foot deep to insulate the undersurface of the tent from standing or flowing water. Then, since dark was fast-approaching and mists were enveloping us, I hailed Jim who had been out looking for a dry spot, and gave him the tent site. I busied myself looking for two stout trees far enough apart between which to string my new Hennessey Hammock. It took me about 20 minutes to find such trees, since B. roraimae is so small and the wood so brittle.

I rigged up my hammock with its fly to protect it from rain, and then I wandered out into the wet flat west of the tent and worked my way alongside the Bonnetia patch going uphill from the tent. My idea was, when full dark fell, to get into the Bonnetia forest and search for frogs going downhill through the forest, eventually leading to my tent. The forest, a narrow stringer of trees, would ensure I wouldn’t get lost in the mists. And the mists did come, almost blindingly.

Just before entering the Bonnetia forest, I came to a puddle of water that looked deep enough for tadpoles. And there I saw some large ones! Eureka! The first scientific result of the Maringma part of our Venezuela expedition. I was unable to catch one, but tomorrow I can use my hat to scoop one up. I’ll photograph and draw the details of the tadpole, then preserve it in 95% ethanol, which will allow me to determine which species it belongs to using DNA analyses.

After the chopper left, I was thrilled when I could hear from all over the tepui little Colostethus frogs calling. They make a plaintiff little “peeeep” sound—a single note. These little guys are difficult to find in the dense vegetation, but I must find some. They may be a species endemic to the top of this tepui—or they might be C. roraima, the dendrobatid frog I found at the base of the prow of Roraima on the National Geographic Expedition of 2003. Some of these normally diurnal frogs were calling into the first hour of darkness.

I entered the Bonnetia forest and soon heard the chucking sound of a frog. It was a single chuck sound, and I tried to imitate it by sucking air quickly from under my tongue. The sound I made didn’t seem to me to be very much like that of the frog’s, but it worked on the frog. I have learned over the years that if you can imitate a frog’s sound, even poorly, it often stimulates them to think you are a competitor (always the males make the calls). This makes them continue to call as you approach so you can home in on their position. Sure enough, as I continued to chuck, the little guy—who was quite hidden in the low bushes—called more frequently and eventually, as I stood peering at the spot where I thought he was lurking, my chucks stimulated him to come out into view, looking for all the world as though he was pissed off at the intruder. I nabbed his little ass! And what a nice surprise. It was the beautiful Hyla sibleszi, the treerfrog with the brilliantly blue undersides, bright green dorsum, bright yellow eyes, and yellow toe-tips. And this little fellow sets an altitude record for the species. Previously, neither I nor anyone else has taken this species above about 5,500 feet in elevation. That’s the highest point on Wokomung, where I took a frog looking very much like this. Maringma is at least 6700 feet high. I heard a couple of others calling, but I did not sleep much last night and it was threatening to rain, so I worked my way to my hammock and crawled in for a night’s slumbers.

2/7/2006

Oh drear! Oh misery! I had a bad night. To begin with, when I got into my hammock, I was quite damp and after I took off my soaked pants, my feet were wet and full of wet, black organic junk. Then, as I settled in, the nylon ropes of the new tent stretched so much that the hammock slumped to the wet, nasty, peaty ground. My butt, back, and thighs were touching wet peat through the hammock. And then the rains came—and the wind. It blew cold and rained and I was miserable. My sleeping bag got wet and everywhere my body touched the ground I was cold. After a couple of hours the rain abated and then I woke to find that I had tied off my rain-protecting fly too high and the left side of it was sagging with about five gallons of water trapped in it that would dump on me if I moved just right. I had to get out naked in the misty, cold night and dump the cold water—which spilled on on my legs—then retie the fly.

But my worst problem overnight was not being wet and cold. For some unknown reason my bladder decided to work overtime. I didn’t drink much water or any beverages all day, but I woke with a very painful bladder no less than 7 times in the nasty night. Fortunately, I was smart enough to leave a pee-bottle outside my hammock so I didn’t have to get out of the hammock to pee. I just bring the hottle inside the hammock and drain my bladder while lying down, hoping not to spill the contents of the bottle. When I got out of the hammock during a break in the rain in the morning, I had to pee twice again. I estimate that I evacuated no less than two and a half liters of liquid in 9 pees! Where in the world did I get so much excess water in my body? It made for very unsound sleeping.

10:00 a.m. I’ve been lying in my hammock writing up yesterday’s journal entry. The misty rain has not let up. I ate one quarter of a large, beautiful papaya I brought with us, and Jim made a protein powder drink using some pear juice we also brought. Dendrobatid frogs are peeping all around me. I need to get up and do something!

First, I walked around in the Bonnetia roraimae stand looking for a tent site. This Bonnetia stand seems to be on a rise in the terrain, so the opportunities for a higher spot on which to pitch a tent are better than out in the herbaceous bogs on both sides of the Bonnetia forest. I found one place, but it was so heavily impregnated with tough Bonnetia roots that I gave up. I am really pissed off that we did not remember to toss the machete from the helicopter. It would have made life so much easier for us.

Next, I carried a plastic pan uphill to the water pool in which I saw tadpoles last night and dipped out six or seven. These might be the tads of the adult Hyla sibleszi I caught last night. Then, when I got back to camp, I found six little Colostethus species hopping around the cleared area under the Bonnetia roraimae where I have my hammock slung. I guess that the males were out trying to dominate the new space for their territories. Anyway, I caught them and have a nice sample of what I think goes “peeep” during the day.

After catching the dendrobatids, I took the plastic pan and emptied the water contents of about a dozen tank bromeliads, Brocchinia tatei, and found tadpoles in every one. The tads are most probably those of the Colostethus that is so abundant by daytime. I collected a whole series of them from small ones to large ones with hind legs erupted, to metamorphs. One metamorph looks like the adults, so I think I am right that these tads are of the Colostethus calling here. I preserved the lot in 95% ethanol, so we will find out by doing DNA tests on the adults and larvae. A really good find was a clutch of eggs that were laid above the waterline inside the leaf of a bromeliad. These are not food eggs for tadpoles, either, because I can see the well developed embryos in the black eggs. There are four to six eggs in the glutinous mass. I’ll have to check them tomorrow for a final count. So, in an hour’s work, I got the whole life series of the Colostethus here. Aside from the tadpoles, I found little else alive, in contrast to bromeliads I examined at about 7,000 feet elevation at the base of Mt. Roraima’s fringing cliffs below the Prow. In these I found a large number of glossoscolescid earthworms and other invertebrates.

After a delicious lunch of a can of tuna, I took off uphill to explore, but the mists were too thick to see where I was going. I walked west and uphill from camp through a stair-stepped wet flat full of squishy ground under a cover of dense herbs, many clumps of the sun-pitcher, Heliamphora nutans. Others were short Bonnetia roraimae plants and low, woody subshrubs. I found a wonderful composite, thick-stemmed like Chimantaea species, but obviously not a Chimantaea. It has a large inflorescence, the size of a teacup in diameter (the largest ones). I found none with flowers, but with well developed seeds inside a ring of stiff yellow bracts that look like the ray flowers of true sunflowers. Almost all of those with seeds appeared to have been torn apart by a bird, I would guess. The seeds do not have a fluffy parachute (pappus) that would render them susceptible to airborne distribution like a dandelion. Rather, I would think that birds distribute the seeds in the relatively small area of the summit of this small tepui.

I walked to the foot of the ultimate hill that marks the very top of Maringma. It must rise about 500 feet higher than the shelf we are on. From the air, Maringma’s top appears mainly to be this terrace, with the hill an eminence in the middle of the otherwise flat summit area. I was afraid of losing my direction in the fog, so I made my way back to the stringer of 20-foot high Bonnetia roraimae where Jim and I have our camp. He’s in his tent and 50 feet away I am hanging from my Hennessey Hammock. I made a place to sit down under the hammock’s fly and I sat there for several hours while it rained and misted all afternoon. No opportunities came for exploring, since the dense fog could be lethal if one walked to the edge of the 2,000-foot high cliffs that fringe three sides of this tepui.

Jim was as restricted as I today. He spent the better part of the day in his tent, much drier—and much warmer—than I. About 4:30 I sat on the soaked ground under my hammock, which I had readjusted to be higher off the ground. I got cold so I pulled out the tent fly and wrapped it around me for a blanket. My clothes are totally soaked, including my raincoat, and I’m hunched down to keep warm and avoid the misty rain that has fallen off and on all day. The tent is not erected because I still have not found a flat place with proper drainage. I sat there in the mists for an hour, shivering.

At 5:30 p.m. I fired up the Whisperjet camp stove and heated water for a package of Mountain House foods for each of us. Jim joined me under the hammock fly for supper and we ate in the mists and the wind and the light rains. After supper he went inside his tent and I sat all alone in the cold waiting for dark to fall.

At about 7:00 p.m., full dark, I set out in the cold, windy, rainy night to see if I could find some frogs. Drat! It must have been too cold and windy for them, because I saw none and didn’t hear very many like I did the night before. I noticed on Wokomung that frogs don’t like to be out in rain, and in wind—forget it! After an hour in which I started to come down with the intense chills and shivering that precedes hypothermia, I decided to get the heck into my hammock.

2/8/2006

I spent another miserable night in this goddam Hennessey Hammock. It rained and misted, with cold wind, all night long. When I went to bed I congratulated myself on my intelligent thinking. I took a large, heavy-duty plastic bag into the hammock with me and pulled it up over the sleeping bag with my feet in it. This prevented the sleeping bag from my thighs down from getting wet. However, the rest of my sleeping bag got wet in places, especially on my bottom, which was cold and wet all night. I slept off an on in the hammock, having difficulty moving because of the cold sides of the hammock. I laid in my hammock on my 3/4-length Thermarest mattress, but the damned thing shifted all night and I was continually slipping off of it. When on it, I am properly insulated from the cold, but if I move off of it, I get cold where my sleeping bag touches the hammock.

It rained and blew all night. I was just marginally warm, but uncomfortable most of the night. And the pee thing was also a nuisance. Last night I had to pee only five times, but reaching down out of the crack in the Hennessey Hammock to find the plastic pee jar was a problem because wherever I touched the sides of the hammock, I got wet. Anyway, I made it through the night only to awaken to rain and wind. So we stayed in tent and hammock until about 10:00 a.m., when I had enough of hammock life even if wet and cold outside.

Jim got up and prepared me a protein shake for brekky and I gave him a large chunk of the delicious papaya I brought with us. Then Jim headed back to the tent and I decided to find a spot for my tent. After a while searching, I found a suitable spot in the Bonnetia forest about 100 feet from my hammock, so I spent about 45 minutes stomping the vegetation and filling the holes with plants. This job would have gone much faster and easier if I had the machete that was not tossed out of the helicopter. Grrrrrr. I got the tent erected, and then about noon, what to our wondering eyes should appear but the sun! It was the first sustained sunlight we have seen since arriving. We jumped up and took the video camera out into the wet flat and did some video filming of me explaining where we were and what the vegetation was all about. Next we walked through the Bonnetia forest to the bog in the next terrace and I talked about the strange and new composite I found here.

The mists came and went while we were filming, but the summit cleared. I told Jim I wanted to climb to the top while I could see to get there and back, so I took off and soon lucked out. The slope leading to the summit is heavily forested with woody shrubs and small trees, making for very difficult going. But I located a human-made path, well trod into the vegetation with machete marks on the woody plants. I ascended the hill quite easily following this ready-made trail. When I got to the rather small summit of about half an acre, I discovered that it had been cleared for tents. Then I followed a very large trail downslope on the other side of the summit and discovered, shortly, a large area cleared for tents. I’m sure I found the trails and summit camp of Dr. David Clarke’s botanical expedition of a year ago. We are not the first people up on Maringma’s summit, therefore. And it occurs to me that David might have gotten the idea to climb Maringma from me because when I met him on Wokomung, I spoke enthusiastically about wanting to climb Maringma and told him how to get to the summit from the village of Wyaline. Apparently he followed through.

The skies cleared and I had some marvelous views in 360 degrees. I could see down into the rainforests of Guyana to the north and east, and into Brazil to the south and southeast. Way in the distance further east into Guyana, I could see Mt. Ayanganna, and to the southeast I think I saw the dim outline of my favorite mountain, Wokomung. Back west loomed Mt. Roraima, with Yagontipu and Weiassipu in between. Apokilang was obscured behind Yagontipu. Yagontipu is at least 500 to 1000 feet higher than Maringma., as is Weiassipu–-and Roraima is 2000 feet higher.

I’d like to come back and do an altitudinal transect for frogs from Wyaline up to the summit of Maringma. David Clarke has already pioneered a trail to the summit, and I have some data on summit frogs already. Most of the interesting frogs will be in the 4,000 to 5,000 feet range, however, below the Bonnetia forests of the summit. Standing on the summit, curiosity got the better of me. I wondered just where David Clarke’s trail led down over the edge of Maringma into the cloud forests below. The west, north, and south sides of Maringma are vertical cliffs, so David had to come around to the east to ascend the tepui. I followed his very broad trail downhill to the edge of the tepui, for about a mile. Sure enough, it runs west for a long way before dropping over the rim. I didn’t follow it downhill very far because the going got steep and the forest dark and thick. But I do now know where his trail first tops the edge of Maringma—on its sloping western side. How it winds its way from Wyaline is something I need to find out.

I made it back to camp about 5:00 p.m. and busied myself making supper. The ##@@!! Whisperjet is clogged up again, but I will be damned if I will blacken my hands cleaning it tonight. So I put chicken and rice into the pot and added a large can of minced tuna. I let it heat for about 30 minutes, and still it was only warm when we ate it. Jim came in bushed from carrying the video camera and tripod, but he ate like a champion.

[Transcribe my paper journal here. My laptop was so down in battery charge (15%) that I entered the events of the nighttime frog hunt in the paper journal.] 10:00 p.m. I caught two Hyla sibleszi treefrogs tonight after much effort. Starting with the first frog I caught night before last, here are some natural history notes on these frogs.

Specimen #1. About one hour after dark, I was working my way through a narrow strand of Bonnetia roraimae forest when I heard a chucking sound. It was the “chuck” that I could not imitate exactly, but by sucking air quickly over the side of my tongue by pulling the tongue sharply down from the roof of my mouth, I made a good enough impression on the frog, a male, to stimulate it to call back when I chucked. The sound I made is the sound you make to stimulate a horse to giddy up. Anyway, this enabled me to creep up on the frog. Otherwise, when approached, frogs shut up and you can’t localize them. Eventually I got to within five or six feet of him and was pleased that the closer I got the more he responded, even in the glare of my headlight. When I was about four feet away, suddenly I saw him crawl out of some thick ground vegetation of a small bromeliad (Navia?) and other plants—very thick. As I chucked away, he got more animated in my light and crawled even farther out into the open. I would never have found him had he not come out into view.

Specimen #2. Tonight I waited until about an hour after sunset before going out for frogs. It was a still night, but fog was quietly rolling in. The stars were visible through the fog at first, then later, not. I walked south along the eastern fringe of the Bonnetia stringer, past the breach in the trees where a small trickle of water flows through, and tried to find a chucking frog (Hyla sibleszi) that I heard in some Brocchinia tatei. The frog got quiet as I approached. I heard some chuckers farther east out in the large wet flat that I have not yet explored, so I worked my way towards them. After about 50 yards, I was in very short vegetation only about six inches high. Then, to my surprise, as I approached the first frog, I suddenly realized that I could be in trouble. The ground began to shake and undulate like a magic carpet. I had walked out onto a quaking bog and no telling how deep the muck might be under the mat I was standing on. The bog plants had formed a false floor with interlocking roots. I abandoned the search for the first frog I was homing in on. Then I got to some firmer ground chasing another frog, but the little devil wouldn’t call when I approached. Frustrated, I got out of the quaking bogs and made my way into the dense Bonnetia roraimae forest, choked with Brocchinia tatei and other groundcover plants. The going was difficult, but I spent 30 minutes searching for frogs without luck. It was a good-looking habitat for species of Stefania, but none were showing themselves.

When I got out of the Bonnetia forest, I was close to the very first chucker I had sought earlier and he seemed a little more willing to respond to my crude imitation. Therefore I began stalking him and with good results. He did what Specimen #1 did last night. He got more vocal as I approached, even though my headlight was illuminating brightly the area around him and even though I was making some noise and moving the vegetation with each step towards him. Soon I was standing almost directly over the little sweetheart, but couldn’t see him in some very thick, sedgy vegetation. After much peering and dozens of back and forth vocalizing with him, I decided to reposition myself on the other side of him, so I worked my way around to my right, making more noise and movement than I wanted, in the thick, thigh-high vegetation until I was 180° from my former position—on the other side of him. No luck. He continued to respond vigorously to my chucks, but I couldn’t see him. Then, suddenly, I spotted a rather large Hyla sibleszi sitting on the leaf of a 24-inch high Brocchinia tatei about where I could hear my Specimen #2. I watched as I got him to vocalize and was thrilled when I discovered that this was a different frog altogether—not calling. I tried to find Speciemen #2, hoping I could capture them both, but I decided to go for this new Specimen #3. I carefully leaned forward and quickly caught her by cupping her between both hands, vegetation and all. And the exciting news is that she appears to be the female of the species. She may have been moving toward my valliant male, who by now, after all the commotion, was silent. I bagged my prize and then went back toward the quaking bog because by now it was very misty and the frogs out there were more vocal.

Well, out in the quaking bog I got worried again about falling through, so I abandoned the effort. It was by now so foggy that I couldn’t see the Bonnetia forest, so the only way I had to navigate was by going uphill. Step by step, I moved uphill and soon heard another chucker. This one seemed as cooperative as Specimen #2, so I slowly crept towards him and got within three feet—and then realized that I was right back vocalizing with Specimen #2, the horny little devil! Since I stood in my same tracks where I had caught the female (Specimen #3), I still couldn’t get a visual bead on him, even though I carefully parted the dense grass-like vegetation to see inside where I thought he sat.

Finally, out of frustration, I walked around to where I thought he was calling from and got another angle on him. I was almost back at where I originally sought him. He continued to chuck vigorously following my own chucks, and VOILA! I spotted him. He was backed down into the axil of a Brocchinia tatei—the same plant from which I nabbed the female and she had been immediately over his head. He was a beautiful pea-green color dorsally. I grabbed leaves and all and had my prize. In total, it required two hours to catch two frogs tonight., When I got to my tent it was 10:10 p.m. And into my welcome dry—and warm—tent I did crawl.

2/9/2006

It’s about 11:00 a.m. and I’m sitting partially in my tent, with my wet legs and boots sticking out of the door. This is to avoid getting the inside of the tent wet and slimy. It’s still misty outside, a holdover from the fog and rain this morning. The reason I am in my tent is not the fog, but I am recharging my laptop and downloading the photos I took this morning. Here are the events of the morning as they happened.

I woke at 6:30 a.m. and wrote the account of finding all three Hyla sibleszi in my paper journal. Then I sneaked out of the tent naked in the fog, barefooted in the squishy peat, not wearing any clothes so I wouldn’t wet the clothes that are now dry. I fetched a jar of peach juice and my last large quarter of papaya and stole back to my tent. I had to wipe the peat and water off of my legs and feet before pulling them into my dry tent. I had a nice brekky of fruit and fruit juice, topped off with a chunk of milk chocolate candy we brought with us.

Overnight I slept wonderfully well in my tent. Rain splattered against the fly all night, but I was dry…and warm! The floor is lumpy, but I can twist and wriggle my way around the annoyances under my Thermarest mattress. And now begins the long wait for the sun to come out. Yesterday was glorious up here, well worth waiting for. I now want to explore the quaking bog to see how deep it is underneath the floating mat of plants. The quaking bog will be an additional wetland phenomenon I can use in future lectures about the wetlands of tepuis.

I walked around naked again in the wet vegetation of the bog looking for suitable plant props in order to do macrophotography with my frogs inside the tent. I spent about an hour and a half, filling up two 1.0 gigabyte memory cards with images. Next, I put on my cold, wet, slimy boots and pants and then walked to Jim’s tent and fetched the little generator. I have been sitting here for about 45 minutes downloading the photos I took of the frogs and writing on the laptop. While it is charging is a good time to use the laptop, since I am not drawing the battery down.

The misty drizzle continued throughout the morning. By noon the fog was thinning and threatening to clear. I got the generator going and began recharging the laptop and batteries. About 2:00 p.m. the sun came out and Jim and I video filmed a segment about Colostethus roraimae breeding in tank bromeliads. I showed how the water in the axils between leaves is an ecosystem in its own. I produced tadpoles and frog eggs from one bromeliad. Then we went out into the large wet flat and filmed me talking about tepui wetlands, using a quaking bog as an example. I accidentally fell through up to my crotch. Before I pulled my leg out, it seemed a good time to test what was under the quaking mat. I reached down a full arm’s length and pulled up some very wet organic matter with lots of roots in it. The mat was also full of one of the two Genlisea spp. What was under the quaking mat was very liquid peat, not just water.

I had an idea that I might walk a couple of miles down David Clarke’s trail this afternoon, carrying food and water, and coming back to camp slowly tonight. After I fell into the quaking bog, I was cold and wet and lost enthusiasm for what would have been an arduous task, and taken a lot of time in the misty night. Besides, we are scheduled to be picked up tomorrow and I should be hale for taking down camp and readying for the helicopter.

I cooked us a package of beef stew into which I threw a giant can of minced tuna for supper. We slurped it down greedily, and had the last nip out of our bottle of rum. I tried to reach Kathy by satellite phone about 6:45 p.m., but was unable to get service. I’m waiting now for the satellites to come into view so I can call her and find out if new funds will be forthcoming and we will be staying the remaining three weeks or if we will have to leave soon after arriving in Santa Elena. I’m also concerned about Mom, who I have learned has been having quite a bit of difficulty with surgery on her back. Then, after 10:00 p.m., I will call Raul and see if he still plans on getting us off Maringma tomorrow.

8:00 p.m. Oh woe! I just got a call through to Kathy and it looks like we will be going home sooner than we planned. Our benefactor was unable to come up with the extra funds that would enable us to stay the entire six weeks. We quite understand and thank him for considering our request. We know that he has many other commitments and he would have helped us out had he been able. We got an amazing amount of work done in the month we have been here and we intend to use what we have accomplished to advance our cause further for a book and documentary film. What we have accomplished in terms of images and video footage should help us find additional funds for our projects.

Mom isn’t doing so well, either, so it is just as well that I return. I may have made a mistake, however, in when Raul intended to come and pick us up. He said Saturday, five days hence. Well, tomorrow could be considered five days if you count the day we got here, but tomorrow is Friday and not Saturday, says Kathy. We may not get off Maringma tomorrow then. I’ll know more when I call Raul in the morning early. I hate to be leaving Venezuela early, but our funds are way over-extended. I don’t know how in hell we will pay for the helicopter flights to and from Maringma. Raul said he would carry us on a bill for a few weeks, so at least I don’t have to come up with it before leaving the country! That’s damned nice of him. And now the rain is coming down with a fury—the heaviest we have experienced on Maringma. Good night dear world.

2/10/2006

The rain came down all night long. Not the misty rain we have experienced, and not a tropical downpour such as I experienced on Wokomung, but a pretty stiff rain. I lay daydreaming about how I will organize my lecture on tepui wetlands, and then on the ruination of tropical rainforest by Amerindians, by means of indiscriminate burning. In addition to the scientific research paper I have already written on this topic, I have a large inventory of substantiating photographs. For instance, at the most remote edges of La Gran Sabana, where the rainforest meets savannah, I have shots of rainforest trying to recover ground it lost by a fire some time previously. There are patches of old burns with rainforest in different stages of post-burn recovery. This contact zone is so far from active Amerindian settlements that it does not get burned as frequently as the rest of La Gran Sabana. I need to get satellite imagery going back in time as far as possible to compare with more recent images, showing the migration of savannah into rainforest following Amerindian burning. The burning is definitely anthropogenic. I have seen no evidence of any fires set by lightning. In fact, as much as it rains hereabouts, I rarely ever hear thunder nor see lightning.

I woke at 5:30 and noticed that the sky was ablaze with orange color. I peeked out of the tent and saw a narrow strip of the horizon lit by sunlight under a layer of high clouds, although the sun was still below the horizon. However, before direct sunlight came into view, mists quickly formed and I lost the view altogether. It is now 30 minutes later and the air is foggy and gray.

I was unable to reach Raul at home at 6:00 a.m., but I got Karina. She said that Raul was in Puerto Ordaz and the helicopter was with the Germans based at Kavac. Raul is not scheduled to pick us up until tomorrow, Saturday, or even Sunday. So we will have another day—or two—to spend on Maringma. I told her to tell Raul that the only times when this summit clears is between 2 and 4 p.m., and not to come for us until that window of opportunity on either day.

2:00 p.m. The day has been mostly misty, with fine rain early, and a few spots of weak sunlight off and on after midday. I busied myself with a long nap while it was rainy, but after about 11:00 a.m. I got up and started the generator in order to recharge this laptop and be able to write. Also, the satellite phone needed recharging.

I spent several hours before and after my nap working on “Memories of a Naturalist,” my biological autobiography. I am writing it primarily for my kids and grandkids to read. I think I will have it privately published via Vantage Press, which has been bugging me for a book for a couple of years. It’s crazy that I am writing about my Alaska and college days in north Florida while sitting in a wet tent on top of a very remote tepui on the border of Guyana and Brazil.

Jim has been out taking 4 X 5 photographs in the misty weather. I’m not moving from this tent until either the weather clears or I get the mood for some exploring. Basically, I have explored the summit of this little tepui from one end to the other. I need a break from the mushy ground and misty air. No better way to do that than to write.

Notes on Maringma.
1) The principal habitats on the summit of Maringma are threefold as I see them. First is the forested parts, dominated by Bonnetia roraimae. Inside these forests grow large aggregations of tank bromeliads, Brocchinia tatei. Bonnetia roraimae has multitudes of very tiny, dark olive leaves on many tiny branches. The leaves and the tiny pink flowers are arranged like a hat over the canopy of the tree, with few leafy branches underneath. B. roraimae can be stunted down to a few inches in height out in poor soils in full sunlight or up to 25 feet tall on long, slender stems in peaty ravines and along stream courses. Up here, the stems are draped with drab green mosses embedded with slimy brown algae. When you grasp a stem of B. roraimae, your hand comes away with black, decomposing bark and wet, glutinous goop.
2) The second habitat type is a low shrub community on deep, sometimes quaking peat. It is dominated by another, larger-leafed (only by 2X) species of Bonnetia with white flowers. Co-dominant with this Bonnetia are large clumps of Heliamphora nutans and single plants as well as masses of Orectanthe sceptrum, the large Xyridaceae with prickle-tipped, whorled leaves Sometimes these subshrub communities have clumps of Briocchinia tatei and Stegolepis guianensis. Also, growing in the low shrubs one can find the mysterious, clubby stemmed composite with huge inflorescences—the composite whose name I haven’t a clue. It could be endemic to Maringma. Wouldn’t that be something?
3) The third community is the short vegetation bogs that are not common except at the east end of Maringma where we are located. There is a wet flat of about 100 acres all across the relatively flat ground of the east end of this tepui. When out in it, one can plainly see that it is not exactly flat, but stair-stepped with little terraces that hold lots of water. In the low places on these flats, one can plainly see that water one time existed in pools. There are a few small pools of up to ten feet across left. These pools are being encroached by wetland plants and the peat held together by their roots from all sides. Moreover, organic matter is accumulating in the bottoms of such pools, too, and the pools are filling in just like swampy lakes with long hydroperiods. It’s the hydroperiod that governs whether a pool will continue to fill with peat or deepen if drought exposes the peat to air and thus the oxygen required for decomposition.
4) Dendrobatid frogs appear to like all the habitats up here so long as they have the large tank bromeliads, in which the frogs breed and spend their larval life. The commonest call they make is a single-note “peep,” but another call, a series of “peep-peep-peep-peep-peeps” may be another species of Colostethus OR another variant of the single-peep vocalizations. I have not found a second species up here, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
5) I was also amazed to find Hyla sibleszi calling from all the different kinds of vegetation, particularly from the huge herbaceous bog. I’m used to this frog living in low vegetation along streamsides on Wokomung and Roraima, although on Roraima I must admit some were five to ten feet high in vegetation clinging to trees. This is a bright green treefrog that hunkers down in the vegetation and probably rarely comes to the tops of the plants in the bogs. There is enough microhabitat in the stems and under the dense subshrub canopy for them to live out their lives out of the desiccating winds at night. Even when I found H. sibleszi inside the Bonnetia forest, it was down in the low, dense groundcover, and that is where I hear most of them calling from.

The day passed slowly. About 5:30 p.m. Jim came down from the hillside west of camp where he had been taking 4 X 5 photos of the vegetation. It was late and neither of us had eaten any lunch, so I fixed up a couple of Mountain House packets of chicken a-la-king for supper. We are out of rum, so we were unable to toast our good luck for being on Maringma, but we drank swamp water mixed with instant tea (Jim) and I had a couple of cups of Tang in swamp water. Neither of us has had a bath in five days, nor been able even to wash our hair. I think we will have a fight over who gets the shower first when we return to Santa Elena!

Night came on fast. It was getting dark and misty about 6:00 p.m. when we finished our supper. The Whisperjet got clogged again and I won’t be able to use it until I clean out the gas line and the little hole through which the gas squirts. This operation gets my hands filthy with black carbon that is difficult to wash off. We had full sunlight again from about 2:00 p.m. to about 5:00 p.m., but no sooner had I crawled into my tent about 6:15 when misty rain began to blow against the tent fly. That we have had clear skies for a couple of hours between 2 and 4 p.m. is good news for our getting off of Maringma on schedule—if this trend continues, hopefully.

2/11/2006

It’s 2:00 a.m. and I have been awake for an hour or more thinking about writing projects. Right on schedule, the misty rains began falling soon after dark, and developed into gusty rain that sounds like sand being thrown against the tent fly. As a backdrop to the sheets of blowing heavy mists, large drops of water pelt the tent fly as they drip off of the Bonnetia roraimae trees overhead. My tent is nestled in a Bonnetia forest, so I get a double sound effect of rain and dripping water.

Today is extraction day #1. I say #1 because Raul has left tomorrow, Sunday, open as extraction day #2. He may not be able to fetch Jim and I from Maringma today because of other commitments. I’m ready to go, but the timing of our departure lies in the weather, first, and Raul’s hands, second. 6:50 a.m. I just got the bad news that Raul is not coming to get us today. I called him on the satellite phone and learned that the Germans are still using the helicopter and won’t be through with it until tomorrow. WE HOPE! So, we have to sit tight on Maringma for another 31 hours until the chopper comes to get us. Grrrrrr. Both of us are quite ready to go now, especially since we are out of funds to continue our tepui activities. I had hoped we could do a couple of fixed-wing flights to finish off photographing the eastern tepuis. That will have to wait.

I stayed up in the wee hours writing until 5:00 a.m. I wrote down some thoughts about how I might revise my book, Herpetophilia, and I organized my book, Memories of a Naturalist. This latter book will be my natural history autobiography from childhood through my days at Tall Timbers Research Station, 1941-1984. The weather sucks. It is gusting and misty/rainy well after sunrise, which we surmise happened because we can see clouds, not because we can see any golden orb.

2;00 p.m. I’ve been in my tent all day writing on my laptop. I ran down the battery one time and recharged it, now I am running it down again. It has remained misty for most of the day, but about 30 minutes ago it rained pretty hard. Jim just came by and has been outside taking more photographs. Poor Jim, he doesn’t have a laptop or any writing or reading materials to while the time away. As a writer, this is just fine with me. I get hours and hours of uninterrupted time to create text. Normally, I am bitching about having too many interruptions during my day to make any progress with writing projects. I am always looking for ways to run away and hide so I can write. Here I am in a forced exile that gives me plenty of time for writing. Unfortunately, I did not load many writing projects onto the laptop because I was saving space for digital images. Still, I had my memoirs in a file and I have been working on them. Now it’s 24 more hours until we are rescued.

8:20 p.m. The day finally passed. I wrote on computer files most of the day, then stopped at 4:30, cleaned the carbon out of the Whisperjet, and made supper. Jim was up the hill waiting for sunset, so I wandered out into the wet flat and took some photos of plants and the bog. He got to the camp about 5:30 and we ate a mixture of chicken and rice with beef, onions, and potatoes. We followed it with half a can of minced tuna. Normally this would be a yucky meal, but we have no options. I deliberately kept from eating lunch again today, as yesterday, to keep my caloric intake down. Jim brought me a protein shake for breakfast, which was the only other food I had all day.

As we sat eating, both of us expressed how much we want to get off of Maringma now. It’s grating on Jim more than me, I believe, because he doesn’t have the luxury of a laptop on which he can spend his time and keep his mind occupied.

Right on time, as soon as the sun set, mists formed and enveloped us. Soon thereafter, just before dark, the mists turned into fine, blowing rain and has continued ever since. It will most likely do this all night. Fortunately, for the past four days we have had clearing skies on our camp from about 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. If this holds—and if Raul comes to get us tomorrow—we will finally be rescued. So far we have sat idle for two days. We still have all of tomorrow morning and some of the afternoon to wait. I hope the Germans got finished with their use of the chopper today and that they won’t hold us up tomorrow.

I investigated all the applications I have on this new Mac iBook and discovered that it has the World Book Encyclopedia. Sure enough, there are all those accounts I have written for it, with my name fully credited.

Good night again, dear world. I will pass the night well, since I like long nights for thinking and snoozing. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I surely hope it will bring a change of scenery for us.

2/12/2006

6:45 a.m. Ohmigod! A nastier morning I have rarely experienced. It rained all night and continues to blow a misty, medium force rain over the landscape. I woke sporadically from 4:00 on to keep track of the time so I would call Raul about 6:15. When the time came, the blowing rain increased and I could not get satellite connections out of my tent. I donned my raincoat and shirt, and then walked out into the big wet flat so the satellite phone could have an unobstructed view of the sky.

I got Raul, but lost him several times. The good news is that he says he is coming to get us today. The bad news is that I couldn’t seem to convince him that it will be cloudy here all day until about 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. That has been the pattern in the past four days. On the fifth day it was cloudy all damned day. So we are supposed to have everything packed up by 10:00 a.m. and sit around waiting. Raul said he would sit in a savannah waiting until he sees the tepui top clear. Good luck! That won’t happen until the magic hours of between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m.

When I got back to the tent I was soaked through and through. I don’t know why they call this thing a raincoat, because it gets soaked and my shirt underneath was soaked, too. At least I was smart enough not to wear any pants, which would have been wetted too. I don’t have anything in the tent to dry off with, so I have to sit nude waiting to dry before touching my sleeping bag or Thermarest mattress. The chill bumps stand up as high as a mountain all over me as I write this.

5:15 p.m. Another interesting day in paradise. I lay in my tent sorting things I need to pack until about 10:30 a.m., then heated some water for what we hoped would be our last meal on Maringma. Afterward, I began to pack up my sleeping bag, air mattress, clothes, camera equipment and everything else, including trash, all of which we will take off of this pristine tepui. By 12:30 p.m., the fates laughed at us. The sky cleared early and stayed that way until we were finally retrieved.

After packing everything carefully, keeping the wet things insulated from the dry, I hauled most of our stuff to where the helicopter would land to pick us up. Then I crawled into my tent for a nap. The tent is the only thing you are supposed to keep erected so that if the chopper doesn’t come at least you have some protection from the weather for your body and your most valuable things. After the nap, I sat in the door of the tent looking out over the splendid wet flat, and damn! Right in front of me crawls a coal black lizard about 3 inches long, It sat in the sun, sunning, and was just out of my reach. As I tried to sneak up to catch it, it bolted. It was definitely a gymnophthalmid, not a Neusticurus species, and I do believe it was a Riolama roraimae, the black gymnophthalmid that lives on the summits of both Roraima and Kukenan. At least that’s what this lizard most reminded me of. It was quite fast, too. I might not have caught it had it been in reach. I could have used my son, Ryan’s, fast lizard-catching hands for this lizard.

About 2:30 we heard the chopper coming. We raced to take down our tents, then ran to the chopper. Raul had come as a helper with another pilot. They were afraid of the spongy peat, worried that the chopper might sink and not be extricated. The pilot kept the chopper on partial lift, just to relieve some of the weight on the skids. We loaded the chopper and had a wonderful flight off of Maringma’s west side. Damn! My camera wasn’t quite ready, so I missed the most spectacular part, just when the chopper went over the edge of the 1500-foot drop.

The sun was out over most of the landscape so I got to take two gigabytes of photos. Roraima was clear, so I got some shots of her. Then we did a baddy. We had the chopper set us down in front of Roraima and Kukenan, and had it fly off while I narrated to camera the beginning of our documentary. Roraima is the most famous tepui, so it is fitting that we introduce the doco with her. We got some splendid stills and video shots, then the chopper returned and we flew to Santa Elena de Uairen.

We checked-in to Amazonas Hotel again (60,000 Bs) and I had a fantastic 30-minute hot shower. Gawd! I really needed it. I’m typing this while Jim is bathing. I’m also up and down watching our clothes, sleeping bags, tents, hammock, and everything that got wet or damp on Maringma. We have it all spread out on the concrete apron in front of our room and that of the adjacent room. And, wouldn’t you know it? The skies are threatening rain! Grrrrrr, again!

Good news. It didn’t rain and most of my clothes got dried out. Jim and I walked up to the Hotel La Gran Sabana and had their churrasco supper again. No one else was there, so we figure that they stayed open for us, since Raul must have mentioned that we would eat there tonight. The entire town is quiet tonight and there are no Brazilians in town, which usually is choked with them. When we enquired why, we were told “Carnival.” Apparently it is the week of Carnival and Brazilians everywhere celebrate it in their home towns. The biggest one close to Santa Elena is Boa Vista.

On our way back to the hotel, walking the shoulder of the highway in the dark, three youths were ahead of us. I told Jim to stay back a while until they were gone, because this was a dandy recipe for a mugging of two gringos. When we resumed our walk, they were sitting in the dark at a cross street, watching us. I told Jim if they approached to run to the Hotel, and I picked up a large boulder and carried it openly in my hand, ready to use it if needed. Nothing happened when we passed, but in South America you have to be prepared for a mugging in every town.

I went to sleep with a belly full of meat and veggies, and with visions of my beloved Kathy and family in my mind. It won’t be long before we are reunited. We are having to cut short our Venezuela expedition by two weeks because we are grossly over-budget, drat it. How in the world we can come up with what we owe Raul is to be discovered.

2/13/2006, Monday

I slept irregularly overnight. Jim said I talked in my sleep. I got up at 8:15 a.m. and quickly packed my belongings into two check-on bags and two carry-ons. And man-o-man, are they ever lighter. I will not have to pay excess baggage fees for my bags, but Jim still has one extra bag.

8:30 p.m. Another interesting day. We walked up to Raul’s office and sat around with Karina for an hour waiting on Luis to come pick us up, and also for Raul to come by. Karina worked up the total bill for our helicopter and fixed-wing flights and presented it to me. I was quite pleased that she deliberately left off a $1360.00 charge for the flight that didn’t deposit us on Maringma. When Raul came in, I told him to check the bill to see if he agreed with it. He asked me if I thought it was too much. I said, on the contrary, that I wanted to be sure he charged enough. He sat down with Karina for a few moments and then surprised me completely. He accepted the #1360 deduction, plus gave us another discount from $935 to $425 for the second flight to Maringma. I was stunned, and very grateful. Our total balance now is $1,380, a very good price. And we are going to work up a brochure in English for him, which will offset this charge, even. So we may not have to pay him the $1,380 at all.

Raul said that when we come back that he would like to spend three days taking us to some very special places that only he knows (a fabulous cave called Ghost Cave is one), and then do the flying we want afterward. We can exchange our photography for his flight time. Sounds like another great deal of mutual benefit.

Freddy had arranged for a friend and guide named Luis to drive us to Puerto Ordaz. Luis arrived at 11:00 a.m. and we left at 11:30. We had a very sweet time saying goodbye to Raul and Karina. They treated us very well and Rail was complimentary to us, saying that we didn’t put any undue pressure on him to come get us or do our bidding, which helped him out with the Germans.

On the road through La Gran Sabana, the weather cleared better than at any time in the past month. All the eastern tepuis (south to north: Uei, Roraima, Kukenan, Yurani, Guadacapiapue, Ilu, and Tramen) were lined up under clear skies. We got Luis to drive off the main highway to a vista overlooking all the tepuis and filmed it. I got some great photos of them all, too. I had Luis stop at the place on La Escalera where I caught the Adenomera at the Mirador de Sierra Lema and took a GPS reading for my field notes. We stopped at the mining town of Km 88 at the bottom of La Escalera and found a dingy little roadside “restaurant” that served wild game. I bought us a lapa dinner, my favorite meat in the world. Lapa is the Venezuelan word for Paca agouti, the large jungle rodent that has white spots along its sides. I also bought Luis a meal of venison, and we had fresh boiled yucca (cassava) for a side dish. Yum.

After lunch at 3:00 p.m. Luis took off down the highway as fast as he could gun the Toyota Land Cruiser, going about 120 km/hr (72 mph). For a while I was freaked out worrying about his dangerous driving on the narrow highway with lots of local traffic and no road shoulders—and then I had enough. I politely asked him in my pidgin Spanish, “Por favor, un poco mas despacio.” He got the message and Jim and I breathed much easier as he drove about 100 kph afterward (60 mph).

About 6:30 p.m. we stopped at the good hand-made cheese place on the highway where we had breakfast because Jim just had to have some more cheese. I had a bite, but was still satisfied after my lapa meal. The lapa had been chopped up into stew pieces and was cooked in a stew. It is one of the tenderest meats one can eat and it was good, but not as tasty as when smoked.

We got into Puerto Ordaz about 9:00 p.m. and Luis drove us to Residencias Tore where Freddy had already checked us in and paid for the hotel room. When we got there, Freddy was just checking in his British group of 19 birdwatchers. We were ushered to our room right past the Brits, who were queued up registering for their individual rooms. Freddy came by and we gave him our tents and sleeping bags at our wholesale cost of $150 each. In other words, we exchanged the drive to Puerto Ordaz and hotel room for $600 worth of merchandise. He paid me $150 for my tent, and owes me $200 for the sleeping bag and some other items I gave him such as the Whisperjet camp stove and some freeze-dried foods.

Freddy did us many favors in turn, such as act as our taxi driver in Santa Elena, arrange lots of services for us, and—in spite of being responsible for 19 Brits in the morning—he offered to pick us up at 6:00 a.m. and deliver us to the Pto. Ordaz airport. We accepted. So I am lying in my bed in the hotel room while Jim is organizing and packing his gear. Mine is packed and ready to go.

2/14/2006

11:25 a.m. Venezuela time (10:25 EST). Jim and I are in the air over the Caribbean Sea en route to Atlanta!! Wonders of wonders. It has never happened before that I got so lucky as to smoothly, without any problems, exit South America. And we did it with no prior reservations.

We got up about 5:45 a.m. and had our bags outside the hotel about 6:15 just as Freddy drove up, bless him. Freddy drove us to the Puerto Ordaz airport and I purchased two tickets on a Rutaca Airlines flight to Caracas. I had to pay extra for Jim’s third bag ($40), but the flight left on time at 7:00 a.m. and was not full. We had a quick flight to Caracas, landing at 8:00 a.m. I paid a nice old man 20,000 Bs (~$8.00 US, and my last of Venezuelan money) to cart our large inventory of baggage from the national to the international terminals, and then was completely surprised when we had no lines in which to wait and were given good emergency exit seats on the next flight leaving for Atlanta at 9:50 a.m. (the same flight we would have taken had we departed on the day of our original ticket, March 1st). I had to pay $150 each for changing the flight date (ouch!), and an excess baggage charge for Jim’s extra bag (all charged on my Amex).

We passed through security with a little fuss, because I demanded that they hand-check my beloved laptop, and Jim insisted that they hand-check his large bag of film. We got through into the international waiting area and heard our boarding call. I purchased four bottles of Cacique extra aged rum for gifts to my sons and we boarded the plane. All went so smoothly that I am still reeling with disbelief. Everything took place like clockwork, without any hurrying, anxiety, OR waiting! And now we expect to land in Atlanta at about 1:30 p.m. EST. Kathy hasn’t a clue that I am coming home today. I haven’t been able to call her since I was last on top of Maringma. It was easier to call using the satellite phone from the summit of a remote tepui than to find a phone in Venezuelan civilization—or the time to make the call.

It was my intention to stay over in Caracas one day and visit the Museo de la Salle and hit the best bookstores, but we learned that because the bridge is still out to Caracas from Maiquetia Airport, the cost of any kind of transport is $200 US each way! They have to use 4WD vehicles over a very difficult track to get back and forth. Freddy telephoned a pal in Caracas and talked him into only charging us $100 each way, but still I would have had to pay $200 for transportation and probably $75 for a hotel and expenses getting our baggage from the airport to the hotel and back, plus meals. Since I am out of money and going deeper into debt using my credit card, I decided to go straight home, especially when I learned that we could get right on the plane soon after arrival in Maiquetia Airport.

I am having reverse culture shock, returning to the hustle and bustle of civilization. All was so wonderful on the tops of the tepuis in pristine wilderness that coming back to the crush of PEOPLE on this planet is very depressing. I haven’t seen TV or heard any world news for one month—and it hasn’t hurt me one iota. The same old crap is taking place with over-population, environmental pollution, preoccupation with material wealth, and political assininity that was going on when I left. The good news is that there are a few places on this planet that are remote from all of it, and one can find solace and escape from the human rat-race in visiting those places. Now I’m day-dreaming about ways to return to my beloved tepuis.

We got in to Santa Elena de Uairen after dark about 7:00 p.m. , after being on the road for 14 hours. Immediately we drove to Hotel Gran Sabana where Raul has his office and met with the man. We met Karina, a nice young woman in her late thirties, I'd guess, and sat around with both of them talking about flights we'd like to take. Raul said that flying fixed-wing to Neblina would require about 10 hours of flight time. At $300/hour, that's $3,000, a large chunk of our money.

We returned to talk with Raul. He escorted us into the Hotel Gran Sabana Restaurant for what I thought was going to be a light meal. There was a nice spread of light snacks including lots of fresh salad makings, so I filled up a plate thinking that was all I would eat. When I finished stuffing myself on the food bar items, the cook brought out churrasco—barbecue—on long skewers with delicious barbecued chunks of beef and chicken cooked to a tee. He scraped off whatever amount one wanted, and the amount you ate was unlimited. All the meats were delicious, as good at in Puerto Ordaz or better. It was some of the best meats I have eaten, so we sat there talking, and stuffing ourselves on protein. I really did not exercise the proper restraint on the meat and paid a price of a sore stomach when I was though. Both in Puerto Ordaz and now here in Santa Elena I have had some of the most delicious barbecued meats I have ever had in all of Latin America . Normally, the meats are cooked like hell and tough. Not so in the past two days.

We booked a room for the equivalent of $27 per night at Hotel Amazonica about a block from Raul's office. The room is really great. It has a large bedroom with two double beds and a smaller room with a refrigerator and a table and chairs. There I set up our electronic equipment and I stayed up charging batteries and doing chores for several hours.

1/17/2006

We agreed last night to take a fixed-wing plane ride to scout where to sit down the chopper on Maringma or Yagontipu, but early in the morning we heard rain falling hard. It continued until about 6:00 before sunrise. Freddy came by at 7:00 a.m. and we went to breakfast at a small café in downtown Santa Elena, eating empanadas (deep fat fried arepas). We then drove around and purchased a few items we needed, including some special batteries for Jim and some nuts and bolts to assemble the stabilizer that he brought with him—sans the crucial hardware.

At last, the skies seemed to be clearing and we drove uphill to see if Roraima was clear. It was. We took off from the Santa Elena airport in Raul's single-engine Cessna STOL. The clouds were dissipating and our flight to Mts. Roraima and Kukenan were lovely over the Gran Sabana. I saw more evidence that a large percentage of the savannah was created by Amerindian burning. Even this morning, only a couple of hours after an all-night rain, there were grass fires burning!

Raul took us up to about 9500 feet in elevation as we approached Mt. Kukenan , passing first over the Pemon Indian village of Ptarai-tepui , the jumping off place for hikers to Roraima. We began photographing the summit and cliffs of Mt. Kukenan ,and then Kukenan Falls . Raul flew several times in large circles over Kukenan and Devil's Canyon between Kukenan and Roraima. We had the passenger side door off so Jim could photograph and I took my shots out of the open window of the co-pilot's seat. It was truly a spectacular morning, probably the best eye-candy I have ever had in one plane flight, although some Alaskan helicopter flights in my younger days were pretty good, too.

I took exposure after exposure at a speed of 1/500 th of a second and wide open. The air rushed in and was quite troublesome. Raul circled around the north end of Kukenan and I got some spectacular shots of large waterfalls off of Kukenan's east face, and of the isolated part of Kukenan on its north end. Devil's Canyon was also easy to photograph, and I took a lot of shots of it, including the west face of Mt. Roraima . Next, Raul flew us several times around the Prow of Roraima and I got some even better shots of the rejuvenated waterfalls off of its summit. There are at least two spectacular waterfalls off of Roraima's east face, too.

Finally, we flew over Yagontipu, which was almost obscured by clouds, and discovered that it is quite vegetated on the summit (wetlands herbaceous stuff, not brush or trees), and not very conducive for landing a helicopter. So we took a look at Maringma and found that it was larger on the summit and more amenable for landing a helicopter. In fact, Raul said that he deposited a German and British botanist on the summit of Maringma about two years ago, after the National Geographic Explorer Expedition I was on. We flew back towards the middle of the east face of Roraima and I got some good shots of Weiassipu. The two mushroom rocks I walked by in 2003 were silhouetted against some white skirting clouds against Roraima. As we flew past Roraima's SW corner, I got off my last shots of the tepuis this morning, but took a couple of La Gran Sabana to demonstrate that fires burned in the savannah up to the edge of slopes and wetlands along creeks. Altogether I shot off 243 images and ran completely out of flash cards. I shot almost all my images on raw setting to get the maximum use of my 10.2 megapixel D200 Nikon camera. I filled up two 1 GB, three 512 MB, and three 256 MB flashcards totaling 2.8 gigabytes of memory. When I got back to the hotel, I downloaded all the images into a file in this laptop, and then burned them onto a DVD . It was scary and difficult to erase such beautiful images from my flashcards.

We spent the afternoon catching up on equipment maintenance and then we took a 30-minute nap. Afterward we repacked all our belongings so that we can fly tomorrow. We had a light supper with Raul in the La Gran Sabana Hotel restaurant and talked politics and business. Raul hates President Chavez and told us many horrible stories about Chavez's abuses of power. Then we settled on what we will do tomorrow and the next few days.

Weather permiting, we will overfly the Chimanta complex of tepuis tomorrow in the fixed-wing Cessna. We will take the camping gear we will need for about a week, then land in the village of Yunek and store our stuff and take off the plane doors. After we fly around and photograph what we want, we will be deposited in Yunek for an overnight stay. Raul will then go to Puerto Ordaz and pick up his helicopter, then fly to ferry Jim and me onto a site we will select tomorrow. We will say goodbye to our friend, Freddy, who will accompany us until Raul comes and then stay up to a week on the summit of Chimanta. Can't wait until tomorrow. Goodnight dear world!

1/18/2006

We got up at 6:30 and then Freddy came by to pick us up at 7:00 a.m. Today is to be another amazing one. We drove around Santa Elena to purchase some miscellaneous items that we need for camping. We ate arepas at a little café, then we purchased some toilet paper, three spoons, three bowls for eating cereal, powdered milk, cups, a pot to boil water in, and other items. We got to the Santa Elena Airport at 8:30 and then waited around for the generator to be brought to us. Finally, after several holdups (mañana-time), we boarded the Cessna and took off with Raul flying.

Our flight path took us across the confluence of the Rio Apongwao and Kukenan, where the two become the Caroni . La Gran Sabana looks much the same on this low-elevation route west of the highway, except that there are more patches of unburned rainforest to see. The Indians have not destroyed such a large percentage of the original forest by indiscriminant burning. For the first 20 minutes or so, we passed over gently rolling terrain with lots of grassy savannah. I could see long pathways that people use walking from place to place. This would be a lovely place for a long hike of several days duration. Raul told me that once he rode for several days on a mountain bike throughout this part of La Gran Sabana.

Eventually the mountains of Chimanta tepui loomed ahead and we passed over the village of Wonken , with a large airstrip. I photographed the small tepui on the north of our flight path that I have photographed in the past. It will be interesting to see how much of the rainforest has been lost in comparing the two photos that are about 12 years apart. Then we circled over the village of Yunek and landed practically in their village square. I thought we would clip one of the thatched roofs with our wingtip when we went past it.

The bad news was that the tepuis were socked in with clouds and Raul couldn't overfly Chimanta as I was expecting him to do today. We got to Yunek so late ( 11:00 a.lm.) tdhat the daily moisture had built up to much. I was pretty disgusted with the weather, and it showed on my face. Raul hung around for a couple of hours, and, ljust by good luck, the clouds lifted—a little—and we jumped in the airplane and took off for one of the most wonderful flights I ever had. I ‘had no idea just how amazing Chimanta is. We first flew around Upuigma tepui, a lone tepui not connected to Chimanta. Then we flew over the south flank of Chimanta and the scenery on top was just wonderful to behold. I don't know whether the newness of Chimanta was the reason or whether it really was so wonderful, but I liked what I saw of Chimanta more than Roraima and Kukenan. Chimanta is huge and sort of star-shaped, with the points running away f rom the central massif and supporting tall cliffs on both sides of their arms and ending is some spectacular tepuis when viewed end-on,such as Acopan.

Jim and I spotted some wonderful places that we can be off-loaded from the helicopter. They will make for great base camps from which to do our photography. Numerous waterfalls were seen on the top. Both rugged rocky and also flat, wetlands alternated over the landscape. Where we flew over the outside edges of Chimanta, the cliffs were forbidding and the views superb. I shot off 198 photographs and Jim about 100.

9:21 p.m. Soft winds blow into my tent. The tent is pitched inside a churuata on the outskirts of the tiny accumulation of huts called Yunek, a Pemon Indian settlement at the foot of Acopan Tepui in Estado Bolivar , Venezuela . I flew here this morning with the expectation of bring lifted by helicopter to the summit of Chimanta Tepui in two days. Jim Valentine and I are on a photographic expedition together and we are accompanied by Freddy Vergara, a 32-year old Venezuelan guide who drove Jim and me to Santa Elena de Uairen from Puerto Ordaz.

We had a marvelous overflight of Chimanta Tepui from about 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. and were totally thrilled with the amazing beauty of the rugged landscapes we saw. I'm recording some of the details of the day here in this paper journal because the generator we brought with us has broken down and I need to conserve battery power of my laptop iBook computer where I have been keeping this journal.

The view from Yunek is spectacular. Acopan Tepui rises abruptly behind the village looking like a castle with towers or fingers of rock jutting into the sky. Dark falls here about 6:30 , so in the absence of artificial lights, one has little else to do except to try to sleep all night. To bed at 9:30 p.m.

19 January 2006

7:30 a.m . Rain overnight chased Jim inside the churuata. He began the night sleeping outside on the ground in front of the churuata because the cockroaches inside the hut were horrifically abundant. They came out of the porous walls and palm-thatched ceiling to forage on anything they could find or eat their way into. Zipped up in my tent, I was safe from their marauding little squishy selves.

The air is cool this morning, and very refreshing. Mists and clouds drape all the tepuis visible from Yunek and it is overcast in all directions. Acopan has a ring of mists skirting her midriff, but her crown of rocky fingers rises above the ring. Waterfalls, waterfalls, waterfalls—everywhere you look on the visible cliffs of tepuis below the cloud cover. Overnight rains recharged them. A gorgeous one drops straight down out of a deep cleft it has etched into Acopan's summit. It falls into the dark green of the cloud forest growing on the talus sloped at the base of Acopan's cliffs. An even taller and more splendid waterfall drops in a long, white ribbon off of Churi Tepui across the shared valley to the right (west) of Acopan.

12:15 p.m . I'm sitting on a large, block of Roraima Sandstone about halfway up a small, box-topped tepui in front of the southern end of Churi Tepui to the west of Yunek. A stiff breeze blows out of the east and it has been overcast all morning, as now. The clouds are fairly thin, however, and I can feel the heat of the tropical sun through them. The village of Yunek sits squarely in front (south) of Acopan Tepui, but I have walked four hours across the valley mouth and I am now sitting on the western slopes of the valley. Acopan is the terminus of the eastern side of the valley. It is a long, flat-topped tepui that forms one of several arms of the larger Chimanta Massif. Churi is another arm of the larger Chimanta Massif. Acopan ends in a high promontory of high cliffs skirted with a classic inclined talus slope. Churi terminates similarly. The summit cliffs are vertical and at least 1,000 feet high, making the summits of both Acopan and Chimanta accessible only by technical cliff-climbing—or as we will experience, via helicopter. [Drawing here.]

About 8:00 a.m. Jim and Freddy walked north to the Yunek River to do some 4 X 5 photography. At. 8:11 a.m. I set out west to walk alone in the vast savannah towards the small tepui that is an outlier of the higher and more dramatic western valley sidewall of Churi. I made it to the rock I now sit upon in four hours, walking slowly and taking photos of things that interested me. One of those things was a couple of wet flats, bogs full of Brocchinia reducta , a carnivorous bromeliad that grows in wetlands and poor soils.

The savannah bogs that I walked through were similar to our wet flats in the Gulf Coastal Plain. Water ponds up on flattish terrain after rains and either slowly sheet-flows away or evaporates. Several large wet flats that I walked over this morning were just like that. On the slopes of the small tepui, however, I encountered true hillside seepage bogs whose water I observed leaking out of the ground at the upslope end of the bogs. The underlying bedrock is horizontal layers of Roraima Formation sandstones with cracks, fissures, and weak bedding planes. The bedrock no doubt holds lots of water as well as the sandy sediments overlying the bedrock. There must be myriad, small, perched aquifers that bleed out onto slopes to create hillside seepage bogs of La Gran Sabana. The water is so abundant that in addition to squishy ground there are little rills of water flowing through them. I was thrilled to see many of the same families of plants growing there that I see in Gulf Coastal Plain seepage bogs: Xyridaceae, Eriocaulaceae, Cyperaceae, Droseraceae, and others. I also found a one-inch long frog, Adenomera species, hopping around in the thin sheet of water flowing through the bog and photographed it. It appears to be the same Adenomera with the red underthighs that I photographed at the Sierra de Lema Mirador off of La Escalera.

1:05 p.m. I took a short nap on the top of my rock and woke to see a very densely black Tropidurus rock lizard next to me. I believe he was attracted to the flies and sweat bees that were working my sweaty clothes. He scurried off when I moved. From my rock I walked uphill halfway to the fringing cliff, and then I walked laterally to the west in order to get up close to the edge of the rainforest growing up the tepui slopes. The Amerindians (here the Pemones) have fired the grasslands so frequently that fires have run upslope to the cliff base of the little outlier tepui I am climbing. [Drawing here.] I was curious to see why savannah and rainforest transitioned so abruptly along a sharp line running straight uphill. My hunch was confirmed when I saw that the contact was a mountain creek that repeated fires have not been able to cross.

I began my descent of the little tepui and long walk back to Yunek at 1:30 p.m. , and then quickly got a soaking from a rainshower. I pulled a large, folded dry bag out of my daypack and then dropped the daypack with its valuable cameras and other electronic equipment into it to keep my valuables dry. As for me, I lied down on the lee side of a large sandstone rock and got some partial protection from the wind-blown rain. After ten minutes the rain subsided to a light sprinkle, and I took off downhill. The going was slow because of the steepness of slope, and now the ground, vegetation, and rocks were slippery. At one rocky/weedy, vertical bank of a small mountain stream draining the little tepui, I lost my footing and crashed down hard sideways. The flesh of my upper left thigh hit a round rock as I fell and I remember thinking as I continued to fall how lucky I was that my hip, just a smidgeon away, had not collided with the rock. I got away with a massive bruise, but could have suffered a fractured head of my femur had I hit that rock just a few inches higher on my leg.

Getting down to the rolling savannah required using my downhill-braking muscles, which rarely get a work out. By the time I reached flat ground, my legs were shaky and I then really had difficulty with my balance. The walk back was very tiring. I first chose to walk across the savannah, not following the series of ridges running down from the slopes of the little tepui that I had walked going uphill. I had to cross several creeks that ran down from the long series of ridges I had ascended. Alas, I soon learned a big lesson—but made some important observations about savannah wetlands. The savannah is replete with wetlands, although to the eye the grassy vegetation of the drier parts of the savannah and that of the the wet flats in the low places all looks pretty much the same, unless the bogs have Brocchinia reducta in them, a very distinctive, yellow plant.

In all the swales in the savannah, extensive wetlands are dominated by grasses and sedges and sometimes with Mauritia flexuosa palms in them. Wetlands of the swales are deep in peat and the palms grow right in the peat, usually in the wettest parts of the bogs. Wetlands with Mauritia flexuosa palms are called morichales. Well, I quickly learned that they often are almost impassible. I crossed three morichales and got mired down in all three. In two, the peat was so wet and infirm that I had to get down on all fours to cross. It helped also, that in one hand I carried a walking stick that I laid prone atop the marsh vegetation to help hold me up!

Again, I think the Brocchinia favors seepage slopes without very much organic matter in the soil. Low on savannah hillsides where water first seeps out onto sandy soil, one finds many such Brocchinia bogs, but the bottoms of the swales are deep in wet peat. I found in some swales in which the roots of the vegetation formed a mat that undulated when I walked upon it—a quaking bog. I was loathe to fall through for fear of the difficulty of extracting legs and maybe even one's body from a fall-through. By the time I had crossed three large morichales I was very tired from the extra work required to walk on such difficult ground. I hot-footed it to the top of the ridge I had originally walked and kept to high ground all the way back to Yunek.

The hills in the savannah are also quite interesting. I noticed that as I climbed several of them, I found pea-sized limonite pebbles and sand at their bases, but increasingly large limonite rocks as I ascended the hill slopes. The normally flattish hilltop is densely strewn with a sort of pavement of large limonite rocks. I have seen this geological phenomenon all over the world. What I think happens is this:

The flat hilltops are the level at which limonite formed in valley sediments underneath what at one time was a deeper overburden. Iron-rich water percolating through the iron-rich sandy sediments precipitated out the limonite on top of some aquiclude: a clay layer or some tightly packed fine-grained sands, or just simply at the top of a local perched aquifer that has long ago been bled away. Later, as erosion cut down into the overburden, washing it away, the limonite is the last to erode away, sort of like a coin left on a tiny hillock of sand after a rain. The limonite acts like a cap on the tops of the flat hills, eroding into ever-smaller pebbles down the hill slopes. And, of course, the limonite pebbles, when ground together, produce the ochre that has long been used to adorn tribal peoples all over the world, and no doubt some of my ancient ancestors, too. Just for fun, I ground up a little of the most reddish limonite I could find and I painted my forehead and upper face with ochre. The latitude and longitude of the limonite hills is N05° 11' 49.2” X W06° 55' 14.9”.

When I finally came into view of the churuata, the sun had set and twilight was fast waning. Jim and Freddy spotted me coming, and both hailed me with upheld arms. Not knowing where in hell I had gone all day, they were quite worried about where in the dickens I had gone off to. I had to tell them that it was my custom to take off for hours on end, and not to worry about me in the future. If I have an accident, it will be my fault and I am quite prepared to rely on myself to get out of my predicament. I did not tell them about my fall.

1/20/06

8:30 a.m . First light came about 5:30 a.m. We woke to high clouds and Jim was out the door of the churuata to take some panorama photos of Acopan when the first light of the sun hit it. The sunrise wasn't very good, however, as the sun peeked through some clouds on the eastern horizon and cast shadows on the tepui. We had a leisurely breakfast and then the village chief brought me two cassava tortas (the large round, thin, white, native bread made from ground yucca, or manioc) that I had ordered.

Jim and Freddy left for a long six-hour round-trip walk to view some ancient Indian rock paintings, but I stayed behind because I want to photograph one of the largest Brocchinia bogs I saw yesterday, and besides, I want to recover from yesterday's nine-hour walk. They left the churuata about 8:15 a.m. and I left at 9:00 . I walked out into the savannah to the NW for a couple of miles and took photos of Acopan and Churi from hillocks. I also made some panoramas that I can put together with my Panorama software program when I get back to Tallahassee .

Today I learned a lot of interesting things about the savannah and its wetlands. First, most of the hills are flat on top and as you ascend them it is quite noticeable that suddenly you see tiny pebbles which become larger as you go uphill. These rocks are limonite or iron ore that once percolated downward in solution, coming to a halt at some sedimentary horizon and precipitating out as iron ore. The limonite strata now serve as caprock to the underlying strata, so that rainfall and runoff erode the hills from the edge of the exposed limonite strata rather than gullying it. The hills erode inward from their edges, in other words. This is quite evident all over the landscape and I took some photos to illustrate this.

Interestingly, rainwater percolates into the ground and seeps laterally along the slopes of these hills, creating Venezuelan hillside seepage bogs, and the Brocchinia , especially, seem to like this. This is where one finds the most extensive Brocchinia bogs. Going downhill it is quite dramatic to be walking on dry soil and suddenly the soil is wet. As you go downhill, it can even be sheet-flowing through the bog, depending upon the size of the hill (and thus perched aquifer) that the water is seeping from.

I've been quite impressed with the extensive peat bogs in the swales between the hillocks. The landscape looks uniformly grassland up hill and down dale, but when you look close, you see that the swales are choked with wetlands grasses and sedges. When you walk out into them, you begin to sink immediately into the peat, unless the vegetation holds you up. In many such places I found the top layer of peat, interlaced with roots, to act like a quaking bog. I could thrust my walking stick through the top layer and sink the stick five feet and still not touch sand or inorganic soil below. I was fooled several times when I assumed that I could make for firmer ground under the Mauritia palms. Heck no! They grow in the wettest part of the swale, or at least when I was near them I fell through the peat up to my knees and would have gone deeper had I not assumed a crawling position.

I examined several Brocchinia plants and got some photos of the slick inner sides of the leaves, the sides that insects must try to crawl up when they fall into the cylindrical water trap. The sides are waxy looking which may be wax, but may also be microscopic hairs. I found insect parts in the soup, although not so many as you find in Sarracenia back home. AND , I found mosquito wrigglers in the soup as well. Apparently mosquitoes (or midges) live in side the soup of Brocchinia like they do in Sarracenia .

About 12:30 I sat down on a lovely little hill with a view into the canyon between Acopan and Churi and had lunch of cassava bread and water. I sat there about 30 minutes and simply enjoyed the wilderness ambience. Then I walked over to the large Brocchinia bog I saw from the little tepui I climbed yesterday, and found just an amazing hillside bog running at least 200 yards along the lower side of a long hill. I got some really superb photos of the bog with Acopan in the distance. I started back to the churuata about 2:00 p.m. and heard and saw a helicopter landing at the village about 2:30 . I was at least two miles away, so I was unable to hump it back in case it was Raul looking for us. I got back to the churuata at 3:30 p.m. , having been walking for 6 1/2 hours (minus lunch). So I got six hours of walking in today on top of my nine hours yesterday! Wheew, I am sore, but today, since I walked mostly on flat to gently rolling terrain and walked three hours less, I was not so tired as yesterday.

Neither Jim nor Freddy were at the churuata when I got there, so I assumed that they had gone on a sight-seeing flight with Raul, to some secret place Raul knows. However, about 5:00 p.m. they came dragging in after their own long walk today of about 9 hours. I had supper cooked and we ate like hogs—all except Freddy who came in with a huge headache. I gave him some aspirins and he retired for the evening. They gave me one quarter of a tough chicken that they had barbecued for them by their Amerindian guides on their walk. It went down very well. I must remember to bring Adobo seasoning on the next jaunt, however, to add some taste to my food.

1/21/06

2:00 p.m . I can't believe it! I'm sitting on top of Acopan Tepui in my tent recording this. The sound of running water pervades the site, since my tent is located on bare rock at the very edge of the stream. Here the stream is an amazing 75 yards wide, running over bare Roraima Formation sandstone. What's unusual about this place is that I walked 250 yards upstream and then out in the adjacent wetlands looking for a couple of boulders onto which I needed to tie my tent fly. I DID NOT FIND A SINGLE LOOSE ROCK !! Everything that looks like a rock, either in the stream or on land, is attached to bedrock. There are no rocks, pebbles, cobbles or anything but bare bedrock and a little sand in the stream bed. I finally broke off a piece of rock that was part of a wonderful erosional pediment. Apparently free rocks quickly erode into their sandy components soon after becoming free of the bedrock. Maybe that attests to the force of runoff waters here during heavy rains.

This morning in Yunek, we woke at 6:30 a.m. and Freddy called Raul via the satellite phone. Raul said he would be in Yunek in one hour and a half. The weather in Santa Elena was getting bad. I was surprised to hear this because I thought that Chimanta was socked in, but Freddy said the clouds were stratus clouds and that the tepui top would be clear when Raul got here. Sure enough, it was. We spent a furious morning repacking our gear for the helicopter lift to the summit, and Raul came just as he said he would. It's a beautiful little helicopter, a four-place Bell Ranger III .

The chief of the village arrived with two other men and presented me with the bill for our stay in Yunek. It was 185,000 Bs (~$84.00 US ) and included 12,000 Bs for each of the three of us per night for three nights in a vacant churuata, a chicken that we had roasted over a fire, and $50,000 Bs for the hire of a guide for Jim and Freddy yesterday.

Raul flew Jim and me up the east face of Acopan Tepui onto the summit and we flew around a few minutes looking for a campsite. We flew over the deep canyon formed by the west fork of the Rio Tirika and then circled back onto the summit of Acopan. Eventually, we want to be put down onto the summit of the main massif of Chimanta near what is called Apakara. That's where Chimantaea mirabilis is found, a fantastic tepui composite that looks like a Dr. Seuss plant. For now, though, Acopan offers a warm invitation.

Jim and I spent a couple of hours getting our camp set up. The big problem is finding a high, dry place in a world that is ALL wetlands. Whether you are on bare rock, which gets inundated at times, or on sand, which always gets flooded, or in the herbaceous vegetation—which is always a bog—you almost can't find a place for your tent. I chose a flat square of bedrock next to the creek and Jim chose a sandy flat about 25 yards back from the creek. He had to pull out all the plants on it and he wisely dug a trench around his tent so water would flow away from the tent.

We got settled in and had lunch, then took a bath in the stream. I washed out my clothes and laid them on the black rocks in the sun. Within an hour they were dry. The stream flows over a wide stretch of Roraima Sandstone, half wet and half dry. The wet places are flowing only inches deep. I walked upstream to where the stream becomes sluggish and deep. Because it is a blackwater river, I can not tell how deep it is, but it looks too deep to step into safely. I then walked onto the slope of the stream's true rightbank (as facing downstream) and found a large herbaceous bog stretching several hundred yards back to camp. I walked further away from the steam, towards the valley sidewall, and encountered a quebrada (small canyon) cut by a smaller creek draining all the water off the higher valley sidewall. One thing to remember about tepuis, the sedimentary layers are laid down horizontally and the landscape that emerges as the sedimentary layers erode is stair-stepped like a wedding cake. In tepui land, everything is either horizontal or vertical, rarely sloping much or very gently over the top of a gently inclined sedimentary layer.

A forest mostly of Bonnetia roraimae grows in the canyons. B. roraimae is in the Theaceae, the tea family, and has beautiful five-petalled flowers, often large and waxy. It may grow in canyons for hydrological reasons. Gullies often have more permanent water either flowing in them or seeping into them. The large, expansive flats, so long as they are rained upon, are true wet flats forming savannah bogs, but here's the rub. During dry periods, the flats dry out, and plants there become severely stressed by the lack of water. In gullies into which water flows or seeps, the hydroperiod of the soils is much longer, and so plants in gullies thrive better, usually are bigger (pitcher plants are a good example), are not so exposed to high-altitude and low-latitude sunlight, and do better, generally.

I fired up our new Whisperjet camp stove and heated water, which we poured into our Mountain House packages of lasagna. We ate heartily and then toasted ourselves for our good luck with some of the most wonderful rum I have ever tasted. It is Ron Anejo Cacique, made in Venezuela , and is as smooth as any rum I ever drank. Usually I don't imbibe alcohol, but we asked Raul to bring us a bottle for celebratory purposes. I'm telling you, this rum is superb! When we retired, I sneaked a couple of hits from the bottle and simply loved it.

Lying alone in my tent after dark about 7:00 p.m. , I thought to myself that no self-respecting herpetologist would just fall into sleep and enjoy a long night's rest. So I got up and spent two hours walking upstream looking for frogs. I walked into a few woody places, but searched the streamside vegetation thoroughly, and then I worked some herb bogs. Later I tried the mixed woody/herbaceous vegetation perpendicularly away from our tenting area and was totally unsuccessful. This was depressing. I was hoping I would find several species. Tonight: nada!

1/22/06

What a lucky devil I am. It started raining within minutes of my returning to my tent from two hours' of frogging last night and it rained all night long. The river was up this morning, only a foot from my tent. Jim and I both are in real trouble from high waters. We searched about for a while this morning for better (=higher) sites, but none exist! The folks that live in La Gran Sabana have all told me that this year and last have been unusual for having much more rain during the dry season than normally.

I slept long and hard last night, waking periodically to listen to the rain pelting my tent fly all night long. This morning it was overcast, but not raining. As the morning progressed, the clouds lifted and we had partly cloudy skies for most of the day, until about 5:00 p.m. when a fast moving squall hit, and then quit within ten minutes.

I got up at 7:00 a.m. and fixed us breakfast. It consists of heating water on the Whisperjet camp stove that operates on gasoline (and most other kinds of fuels). We then pour hot water over oatmeal that I brought and Jim prepares us a power drink of some powdered protein mix he brought along. We might have a cup of hot tea made from a powdered mix that Freddy gave us.

About 9:00 a.m. I wandered off into a bog downstream and on the right bank and found some lovely Brocchinia hechtioides , the large carnivorous bromeliad. I searched several of these large bromeliads for frogs, but found none. I then found a large patch of Heliamphora minor (several thousands of sun pitcher leaves and hundreds of flowers in bloom) and Jim came and did a video shoot with me on camera talking about plant carnivory. I climbed the hill beyond and got a view down canyon. Our stream flows over rock for a while, then becomes channelized into a deep, narrow fissure and sluggishly progresses for maybe a couple hundred yards, before running over rock again. I climbed around in a Bonnetia roraimae forest for a while, noting that the ground is covered in sphagnums, Cladonia-like lichens, or true mosses. The shade under the Bonnetia is considerable and affects what grows there.

I was not contemplating lunch, but about 12:30 Jim said he was starved, so I cooked up two Mountain House packets for two and he ate one and one half packages. I ate only one-half a packet because I wasn't really very hungry and besides, I'm losing weight and want to continue doing so. After lunch, I wandered off to the west, across the river, and ascended a small escarpment up onto a flat boggy area. These wet flats are very common on tepuis, and especially here. I entered a very dense Bonnetia roraimae forest beyond the bog, but the vegetation was so thick that I came out again and walked north across the bog towards a slope that has rock pinnacles, or rock pediments on it. These are erosional columns of sandstone that are sculpted into amazing forms. Most are columnar, some are squarish or very blocky, but many are round and cylindrical. Beyond the pinnacles, I found a higher wet flat, and this one was marvelous. In it I found my very first Chimantaea , a genus of composites endemic on Chimanta. This one is C. humilis , and it is quite wonderful. It grows on a single, thick stem and has strongly leathery leaves that are revolute [I think revolute means the sides are curved under]. Only two- or three-inch long leaves come out of the stem at the top, and when in flower, the inflorescences are nestled in the middle of the top of the bird's nest of leaves.

I photographed lots of scenery and plants in this bog and in the surrounding environs today, then made my way across the bog towards the cliffs of the valley wall beyond. There I found at least one branch of our creek still entrenched in a deep crevasse, so I was unable to pass. I turned back and then got caught in a quick squall that blew up. I sheltered in a rock pinnacle that had a hole in it big enough for my body with a rock roof overhead. Eventaully I made my way back to camp, arriving about 5:15 p.m. Jim was doing some 4 X 5 photography when I came in.

I started up the generator and began recharging the many batteries of both of us. It is now 8:30 and the generator is still running. This laptop takes quite a while to recharge, but so too does loading my digital images into it. Right after I got into the tent at about 5:30 , it began to rain and hasn't let up since. It is quite miserable, but then that is what living on top of a tepui is all about. We tried to use the satellilte phone to call home, but Kathy seems not to have been there.

I made supper using the Whisperjet under my tent fly with me sitting inside the tent. This is dangerous because the tent is flammable and there are tags on the tent warning about the danger. Aside from that danger, one of my problems is that some of the damned exhaust of the generator has been blowing back into my tent, so I have been breathing its fumes for three hours. I hope this won't give me some problems later. I'm smart enough not to go to sleep with the damned thing on for fear that some of what I am breathing is CO. As soon as my second Nikon camera battery gets charged, I'll turn it off.

1/23/2006

7:00 a.m . I had an uncomfortable time sitting in my tent trying to recharge batteries last night because of the incessant rain and exhaust fumes from the generator blowing into the tent. About 8:30 I got tired of the fumes and turned off the generator, with the idea that I will start it up in the morning when I can reposition it and/or get out of the tent. After I turned off the generator, the ambience of the night was lovely. I love being in a tent with rain pattering on the fly and wind blowing and shaking the tent. And because of our remote location, it all feels so isolated, a feeling I have always loved, for some strange reason.

The more remote I am from civilization, the more at peace I am with myself and the world. Even as a kid of 7 or 8 years old in California , I loved walking in arroyos or on ridgetops where nobody knew where I was. In Alaska I had a favorite place across the ravine from the log house and up on top of a forested slope to which I would snowshoe in winter. It was a couple of white spruce trees whose branches hung down to the ground and were surrounded by a ring of dense, low brush. I could snuggle down under the branches and look out in all directions without being seen.

I tried out the satellite phone last night from inside my tent. It worked! I called my beloved Kathy and she reported that all was fine with the family. I was especially concerned that Mom was OK. I had to hang up quickly to conserve the 120 minutes I purchased with the phone, but I was loathe to stop hearing the voice of my sweet girl. She's a great partner, and I love her very much.

A blowing mist fell all night. I woke periodically and peed in a plastic bottle, so I wouldn't have to step out in the dreary weather. I'm in love with my new NorthFace tent. It is larger than the other tents I own, and gives me a little more room to stretch out and to place my belongings. It is more of a working tent than a backpacking tent. It weighs 7.4 pounds versus the 5 something of my others.

The stream roars outside my tent, but is not up substantially from the overnight misty rains. It did not rain so hard last night as the night before, although it was inclement all night. This morning, like yesterday morning, the highest points of the tepui are covered in mists, but at my tent there is no fog. There will be no morning sunlight to brighten up the cliff faces for pretty photos.

Roraima Sandstone is pink, but where it is exposed to air, it gets covered with a blue-green alga that is coal black. White, crustose lichens grow on it, giving it a salt and pepper appearance. The sand that erodes from it is also pretty pink. Sometimes, on cliff faces, especially when the sun hits it, Roraima Sandstone appears orange.

Up here I see several types of wetlands. Wet flats are common, with water standing after rains and getting choked with vegetation. The vegetation grows, dies, and the litter accumulates in the water, causing the build-up of peat. Water has a difficult time running off of these wet flats because the peat and dense vegetation impedes its sheet flow. Often plants that grow ubiquitously over the landscape such as Heliamphora minor, Brocchinia reducta, Tepuia sp., Orectanthe sceptrum , and many others are stunted in wet flats. This must be because of the harsh conditions there in full sunlight, which dries out wet flats in those few days or rarely weeks when it doesn't rain. I suppose the acidity from the decomposition of the plants sitting in place might also influence growth.

Another type of wetland is the Bonnetia roraimae forest, which I mentioned earlier lives in places with more water, usually where water flows in a channel, a low place in the terrain. This could be a gully or just a low place in a wet flat where water collects as it works downhill. And, I suppose, the peat is deeper in these places because of the more continuous presence of water, even during drought.

Very few birds are found up here. Yesterday I saw a large, green hummingbird and heard a squeaker in a Bonnetia forest, but never saw it. One good thing, there are very few biting insects. No blackflies! Hurrah! But in the twilight of late afternoon, we have a few husky, black mosquitoes. I heard what I believe is the treefrog, Hyla sibleszi, calling yesterday from the forest along the creek. It is the only frog I have evidence for up here. It may also be a species of treefrog in the genus Ololygon . Reading what Steve Gorzula has written about the frogs he collected on Chimanta, apparently Stefania ginesi hangs out in Bonnetia forests. I really want to see this frog. Young Stefania and Hyla sibleszi can be found in the large Brocchinia hechtioides bromeliads inside Bonnetia forests. I've been looking but haven't yet found one. Maybe today.

The thought hit me last night in the tent that looking for frogs conflicts with doing photography on these expeditions. After a long day of walking all over the terrain, I am dog-tired at night and not very motivated to go out again. When I am on a frog-hunting expedition, I work up my notes and nap during the day, and spend two to four hours at night out hunting. I am rested, therefore, and able to work at night. When I was on Wokomung, I didn't do anything else but organize my time for my main purpose, searching for frogs at night. Here it's the opposite. I use my time all day for the main purpose of photographing all the wonderful scenery and plants I can find.

About 1:00 p.m. while I was just taking off for my long afternoon's hike, a small fixed-wing plane flew into the area and made a large circle and buzzed us only about 50 feet off of the ground. It must have been Raul showing another group the tepui top. He said he had a group of botanists lined up for a helicopter visit here. When he flew us to this site, he said maybe in four days he would come by in the helicopter and move us to another site. That will save us some money, since the other group would pay for the flight here and we would only pay for the time it takes for him to ferry us to another site.

And now to exit the tent and face the cold, windy morning. Ah, Wilderness!

I ate some dry cereal with powdered milk reconstituted with water and then Jim and I walked upstream, across the bog on the far side, and into the rock pediments near the top of a ridge. Mists enveloped the tepui summit this morning, creating a mysterious ambience. We video-filmed me talking about geology and some of the tepui plants ( Aphanocarpus steyermarkii, Maguireothamnus speciosus, and Notopora chimantensis ). This took all morning, so when we were finished, I walked back to the tent feeling very poor. I was shaky and weak and very lethargic, a rather unusual condition for me. I made us a hot lunch, and Jim gave me some vitamins. Afterward, I lied down and took a nap, but I still felt lethargic when I woke. This unsettled feeling persisted for several hours and eventually disappeared in the late afternoon. I attribute it to CO inhalation last night. One of my symptoms seemed to be not getting enough oxygen when exercising.

I finished charging our batteries and my laptop during midday , and away from having to breathe the fumes of the generator. This laptop requires a lot of time on the generator, at least two hours for a complete recharge!

The afternoon from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. went much better. We returned to the rocky ridge and I spotted a flowerpecker, Diglossus major , working some Notopora smithiana flowers. I was fascinated with this bird's acrobatic antics. It even hung upside down to reach some of the nodding flowers. I alerted Jim to this and we set up the camera to film it, getting a little footage. I hope it turns out. After a while, I wandered down the little ridge a few yards and had a big surprise. I found another Chimantaea species, I think C. similis . It grows as a low shrub with a substantial woody trunk. I got some great photos of its inflorescence in full bloom. I'll have to send this and some other photos to tepui botanist, Otto Huber, for verification when I get back to the States.

The day was waning, so we walked down into the lovely wet flat with all the large Brocchinia hechtioides and Chimantaea humilis and set up to catch the sunset light on the bog. We watched the flowerpecker work Maguireothamnus speciosus and missed an opportunity to film it. Then we saw a sparrow common on tepuis, Zonotrichia capensis .

I was most delighted when I found my favorite bladderwort, Utricularia humboldtii , in full bloom in the bog. We filmed me talking about plant carnivory and the bladderwort, which has the largest bladders of all Utricularias in the entire world. This bladderwort commonly grows its bladders in the axils of bromeliads, so sure enough, I found it growing in the axils of the Brocchinia hechtioides . Bladders are large as a pea and it also has huge phyllodes. I saw it growing out in the bog, too, not as a “parasite” on the animalcules of the Brocchinia .

All in all it was a great day. We got back to camp after sunset and I fired up the Whisperjet stove as it was getting dark. We ate our Mountain House freeze dried foods and had some hot tea laced with the wonderful rum Raul delivered the other day. I was having some trepidation about trying to do a documentary film out here, wasting time that could better be put to getting images for a book. But after devoting today to video filming, I may change my mind. I have the freedom to expound on all aspects of the ecology of this wonderful part of the world, so let it be filmed and we will see if we can market it. If not, at least I will have a lot of takes of me explaining the ecology of tepuis that I can make into a DVD for my kids and whoever else is interested.

1/24/2006

I worked on transferring my digital photo images into the laptop after supper last night and then thinking about tepui ecology and adventures hereabouts. A great idea hit me. I now have some wonderful photos of the hidden waterfall in Devil's Canyon between Roraima and Kukenan. The waterfall that the Amerindians told me 12 years ago was better than Kukenan. Well, the other day when we flew over Mt. Kukenan, I got to see the hidden falls and damned if it might just be taller than Salto Kukenan. In fact, I photographed both of the falls within minutes of each other for comparison.

Here's an idea. Since Kukenan Falls is listed in many sources as the world's third tallest waterfall, I could mount a small expedition to come back and measure both Kukenan Falls and what I am calling “ Hidden Falls .” All that is required is a device that measures distance accurately. I could have Raul helicopter someone with the receiver to the bottom of Kukenan Falls and land on a rampart of Roraima and take the distance measurement, including the angle from horizontal to the base of Kukenan Falls . I could then determine the height of the falls using the angle and one leg of a right triangle. This could be repeated for Hidden Falls by putting off a person with the measuring device on top of Hidden falls on Kukenan, and then landing on the summit of Roraima to get distance to the top of Hidden Falls and angle to the bottom of it. Wow, what an interesting article for South American Explorer Magazine—in color!

We got up about 7:00 a.m. to a misty morning. Jim brought me a whole handful of vitamins (C, B, E) and I fixed us some hot oatmeal. The light was not so good this morning for video shooting, so I used the opportunity to do some exploring—WHICH I MOST LOVE TO DO! I told Jim I would be back around 1:00 p.m. and we would finish filming up in the big wet flat in the afternoon from about 3:00 p.m. onward.

I have had a hankering to explore the series of benches that rise to the south of our camp (behind us), so I took off with my camera, a tripod, and a dry bag in which to put all my sensitive equipment if it rained. I worked my way across the swamp behind our tents and then climbed the vegetated, rocky slope. About 100 feet above the camp, the slope became a gently inclined plane with short herbaceous seepage vegetation, easy to walk in. Shortly flat bedrock began to show through and Eureka ! I found my third species of Chimantaea . It was quite clearly C. huberi , named after my friend and one of the most accomplished tepui botanists, Otto Huber. It is a little short thing that grows down hugging the ground and has a couple dozen tiny, sclerophyllous leaves bursting from the top of a thick, short stem. All you see looking down is the whorl of leaves of numerous plants growing together along the edge of rocks and peat. I suppose it could also be the species, C. acopanensis , but I don't think it is. In Huber's edited book, Chimanta, I see two pictures that look very much alike and can't tell them apart. I took many photographs of the plants au natural and anatomically.

Then I continued working uphill and soon found myself in a fairie land of rock pillars. I photographed some and walked through them to the summit of the hill they were perched on. I had grand views of the valley we are camped in, but to my delight, when I looked on the far side of the hilltop, I discovered that the land fell off of a cliff into a deep valley with a high tepui cliff valley wall on the other side, maybe 1,000 feet higher than the hilltop I was standing on, which served as the other valley wall of the canyon. It was spectacular and soon the mists began to blow in and—on and off—I was covered in misty silence.

I perched my tripod at the edge of the cliff I was standing on and I leaned against a rock to watch the changing weather. I swear, mists evaporated in seconds when a certain dry wind blew, or any breeze that changed the elevation of the mists. Then I worked my way down the side of the valley along the ridge top with rock pediments above me on my left hand side and the steep drop of the cliff on my right hand side. I walked a beautiful herbaceous meadow on a 50-feet wide terrace to reach the promontory of the ridge. As I rounded the ridge and could begin seeing into the mouth of the valley that Jim and I are camped in, I found another example of what I think is Chimantaea humilis , with large leaves and rusty, hairy underleaves growing out of rocky ledge like the ones I saw yesterday.

The far end of the ridge inclined down a long, gentle slope with a short, herbaceous bog all the way to the river we are camped on. Since we had not gone downstream to where the creek makes a fall into upper Yunek Canyon (which we saw by helicopter), I decided to continue downhill to the creek, which I could now see clearly. We have been unable to go downstream from our camp because the stream, after flowing a long way ov