Angel Falls, Venezuela

Angel Falls plunges off the edge of Auyán-tepui, a flat-topped sandstone mountain in Venezuela's Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State. At 979 metres (3,212 ft) total height, including an 807-metre (2,648 ft) uninterrupted plunge, it is the world's tallest waterfall by that measure — more than fifteen times the height of Niagara Falls. The water feeds a fork of the Río Körepa, which flows into the Churún and then the Carrao River, a tributary of the Orinoco.

The falls are named after Jimmie Angel, a U.S. aviator who became the first person to fly over them on November 16, 1933, while searching for a valuable ore deposit. Returning in 1937, he tried to land his plane atop Auyán-tepui; it sank into the marshy ground, and Angel and his companions spent eleven days hiking back to civilization. In the Pemón language of the Indigenous people native to the region, the falls are called Kerepakupai Vená, meaning "waterfall of the deepest place."

There are no roads to Angel Falls — visitors travel by boat up the Churún River from the village of Canaima, then hike the final stretch through rainforest. As a jigsaw, the scene splits into natural zones: the pale cloud and tepui rim at the top, the richly textured orange-and-black cliff face through the middle, and the thin ribbon of falling water and green canopy that anchor the bottom.