¨To fly, dear lord in heaven, to fly¨

My grandfather used to fly a small 2-seater Piper Cub seaplane, and that is the first line in a poem he loved. Unfortunately I can´t remember the next line, but Mom, when you read this, could you post it as a comment? We flew from Cuidad Bolivar to Cainama, a small town accessible only by small plane, in the middle of a national park. The town is just to the right of the lagoon (picture below). There are 7 waterfalls that spill into the lagoon at this point (5 seen here), and they create a lovely, fine red-sand beach at the edge of town.

The flight was amazing--a little 6-seater Cessna that pops into the air within seconds of taxi-ing. I haven´t been in a plane that small since I flew with Pop-pop in his Piper Cub when I was 12. Michael had never been in such a small plane. Fortunately for us, the 5th passenger in our group was a Mexican who had his commercial air license, and had flown lots of Cessnas. So we felt pretty relaxed in the tiny plane. But better yet, the Mexican was on a one-day tour, where you seen Angel Falls by air. We were on a three day tour, and were supposed to land in Cainama, then boat up the river 4 hours, and hike an hour to get to the base of the falls later that day. But as we got close to Cainama, we could see that the weather was looking good, and the huge tepuis (table mountains, described in next post) were sticking out of the mist. The Mexican conversed with the pilot, and then turned and told us, ¨We´re going straight to see Angel Falls now, because the weather changes so quickly.¨ So, suddenly we were flying on up the river, into the land of the vast tepuis, mist swirling around, literally hundreds of waterfalls appearing, spilling off the table-top mountains everywhere we looked. And then, we rounded one more cliff face, and there, dipping off the right wing, was Angel Falls. It falls almost 3000 feet--a length almost impossible to comprehend. Just think of all the 3000 foot distances you know in your life, and then picture a waterfall that falls straight down a cliff face that entire distance. And there we were, flying over it. Pop'pop would have been proud.