Angel Falls drops from the edge of Auy谩n-tepui, an enormous mountain with a flat top, like a table made of rock. The water flows so far that on the way down it turns into a long curtain of white mist. By the time it reaches the bottom, much of it is moving as cloud rather than as a river.
The falls are in a protected national park called Canaima, in a part of Venezuela where there are no roads at all. To visit, people travel by small plane to a tiny airstrip, then by motorised wooden canoe up a chocolate-brown river. The whole journey takes a day or more.
The local Pemon people, who have lived in this region for hundreds of years, call the waterfall 'Kerepakupai Ven谩', which means 'fall from the deepest place'. They have known about it for as long as anyone can remember.
In the dry season the river above the falls slows down, and the water becomes a thin silver thread. In the rainy season the river roars and the falls become a thundering white wall, so loud you can hear them from far away in the jungle.