Boyoma Falls consists of seven sets of waterfalls in the Lualaba River in central Congo. The falls extend for 97 km along a curve of the river between Ubundu and Kisangani. The total fall in the river's elevation is some 200 feet, and the seventh and largest falls are 800 m wide. Beyond the falls, the Lualaba becomes the Congo River. Sir Walter Raleigh described what was possibly a tepuy (table top mountain), and he is sometimes said to have discovered Angel Falls, but these claims are considered "far-fetched".[1] They were spotted in 1912 by the Venezuelan explorer Ernesto Sanchez La Cruz, but he did not publicize his discovery. They were not known to the outside world until American aviator Jimmie Angel[2] flew over them on 16 November 1933 on a flight while he was searching for a valuable ore bed. Returning on October 9 1937, Angel tried to land his Flamingo monoplane "El Rio Caroni" atop Auyan-tepui, but the plane was damaged when the wheels sunk into the marshy ground, and he and his three companions, including his wife Marie, were forced to descend the tepui on foot. It took them 11 days to make their way back to civilization, but news of their adventure spread, and the waterfall was named "Angel Falls" in his honor. Angel's plane Angel's plane remained on top of the tepuy for 33 years before being lifted out by helicopter. It was restored at the Aviation Museum in Maracay and now sits outdoors on the front of the airport at Ciudad Bolívar. The first recorded person to reach the river that feeds the falls was Latvian explorer Aleksandrs Laime, also known as Alejandro Laime to the native Pemon tribe. He made the ascent of Auyan-tepui in 1955. He also reached Angel's plane on the same trip, 18 years after the crash landing. He gave the river feeding the falls the name Gauja after a river in Latvia, but the Pemon-given name of the river, Kerep, is still widely used. Laime also was the first to clear a trail that leads from the Churun river to the base of the falls. On the way, there is a viewpoint commonly used to capture the falls in photographs. It is named "Mirador Laime" ("Laime's Viewpoint" in Spanish) in his honor. This trail is used now mostly for tourists, to lead them from the Isla Raton camp to the small clearing. The official height of the falls was determined by a National Geographic Society survey carried out by American journalist Ruth Robertson in 1949.
The Natives in Venezuela had known about the "Salto Angel" since the beginning of time. Then United States pilot Jimmie Angel was flying over the area in 1935 when he landed on the top of a lone mountain in search of gold. His plane got stuck in the boggy jungle on top of the mountain and he noticed a pretty impressive waterfall plunging thousands of feet down. He wasn't too happy about the 11 mile hike back to civilization, and his plane remained stuck and rusting upon the mountain as a monument to his discovery. Soon the whole world would know about the falls, which came to be known as Angel Falls, after the pilot who "discovered" them. Angel Falls plunges from the top of a mesa, or what the natives call a Tepuyi. Named "Auyantepui", the Angel Falls mesa is one of over a hundred of its kind which are scattered about the Guiana Highlands of southeast Venezuela. Like so many slumbering giants, what characterizes these mesas (Tepuys) is their massive heights soaring up towards the sky, each with a flat top and totally vertical sides (check out the picture at left). Also called "table mountains" (which accurately describes their shapes) these Tepuys were formed out of sandstone billions of years ago. Their vertical sides are continually being eroded by the action of water from the heavy rainfall the Guiana Highlands gets.
Boyoma Falls, formerly known as Stanley Falls, consists of seven cataracts, each no more than 15' high, extending over 10 km (6 miles)along a curve of the Lualaba River between the river port towns of Ubundu and Kisangani in the Orientale region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At Kisangani, at the bottom of the falls, the Lualaba becomes the Congo River flowing generally westward. It has a total drop of 61 meters (200 feet). A rail line goes around the falls, connecting Kisangani and Ubundu. Angel Falls is one of Venezuela's top tourist attractions, but even today a trip to the falls is not a simple affair. The falls are located in an isolated jungle region of Venezuela, and a flight from Caracas or Ciudad Bolívar is required to reach Canaima camp, the starting point for river trips to the base of the falls. It is also possible to purchase a package that includes an aerial flyby of the falls. The falls cannot be seen on cloudy days, and there is no guarantee visitors will see them. River trips generally take place from June to December, when the rivers are deep enough for the wooden curiaras used by the Pemon Indian guides. During the dry season (December to March) there is less water than is seen in some photos, but it is also more likely that the top will not be clouded.
