I spent a bad night, partly because I was so tired, and
partly because the kink in my neck continues to hurt, particularly when I try
to turn from lying on one side or the other. Rain is falling pretty steadily.
Somehow I managed to crawl out of my tent (hard to do when
you are stiff) and joined Simon in one of the upper ledges, where he had just
started on breakfast. He has an ancient Primus kerosene stove, which he coaxes
into providing heat for an early cup of coffee, which I enjoy as I watch them
do his magic. Sitting in the cramped ledge he has placed everything within
arm’s reach so he doesn’t need to get up. Basic cooking implements are an old
Tupperware plastic box (the type you would pack sandwiches in for the whole
family), a small plastic tray (of the type you get you Happy Meal served on), a
fork and knife set, a small frying pan, a dented aluminum pot, and a dented
aluminum jar for boiling water.
Today Simon is making bread, so he mixes flour, sugar, salt,
and water in the Tupperware, and he vigorously knead it for several minutes
while a few spoonful of oil heats in the small frying pan. Then he tears small
pieces of the dough and flattens it on the serving tray, using his water bottle
as a rolling pin. Once he has a nice flat piece the whole thing goes into the
hot oil, to cook in the same way Navajo bread is cooked, flipping it with the
fork. Repeat the process a dozen of times, and pretty soon you have a nice
stack of bread cakes. Now the tray turns into a chopping board and he uses the
small knife to chop onions, garlic, tomatoes, and peppers, which eventually
find their way into the residual oil. Add eggs and salt and, ta da, breakfast
is ready.
Luis, excellent guide that he is, offers to take me around
under the steady rain to see some of the worthwhile sights of the mesa. Great!
There are two philosophies on how to spend a day under the rain. Luis favors
covering himself as best he can, in a futile attempt to stay dry (he has also
commandeered my umbrella given that I am not planning to use it). I favor
becoming one with the rain, and dress in a thin shirt, shorts, and sandals.
Since there are all sorts of rivulets and ponds all around us I believe I made
the best choice. As a useless factoid, Luis tells me that the average annual
precipitation is 3,000 mm; that would be 120 inches per year!
The first thing I am looking for is my gabbro sill (I am
afraid that yesterday I lost my focus, and as my Mom would so aptly put it I
regarded every rock I stumbled upon with hatred). Alas, nowhere to be found. I
am surrounded by sandstone and nothing else. I did mention the abundance of
cross-bedding and ripple marks, so I conclude that this is a fluvial sequence.
I did not do any previous research on Roraima, but a map Luis gave me states
that the sandstones belong to the Proterozoic Roraima Formation (that means no
fossils of any sort).
Wait, that is a perfect armor of an Ankylosaurus! Oh, no, it
is just an interesting erosional feature on the sandstone. And there is a
perfect turtle, and over there the head of a horse. Yes, it is that kind of
landscape where a vivid imagination can see all sorts of fantastic shapes. No
wonder it was chosen by Conan Doyle as the setting for his “Lost World”, where
some intrepid explorers find a world inhabited by all sorts of cool dinosaurs.
On the fanciful vein, the water-soaked landscape looks to me
like a Devonian landscape, where sparse ferns and odd-looking insectivorous
plants struggle to survive on a rocky substrate. Ignoring for the moment the
small non-endemic birds, this Devonian world is inhabited only by insects and a
small black frog, again examples of life attempting to take hold of the
opportunity to conquer an almost empty world.
A peculiar feature of the sandstones are concretions, that
in some instances are filled by milky crystals of quartz about 3 cm in length.
As the rocks erode, the crystals are liberated from their matrix, and
accumulate like small stringers in the channels of the multiple rivulets.
Eventually the rivulets join to form small streams. One of these streams has
eroded some large potholes, and these potholes have become traps for the quartz
crystals. Luis tells me that this place, called “The Jacuzzies”, is very
popular among some “New Age” visitors, who like to bathe in them on the buff,
under a full moon, to soak the energy being concentrated by the crystals. Odd.
All streams eventually reach the edge of the plateau to form
the signature waterfalls of Roraima, but one of them in particular hides itself
as a subterranean river before reaching the edge.
Eventually we went back to camp, only to find Simón and
Antonio vegetating under the ledges, dry but in what seemed to me to be a state
of suspended animation. Them, including Luis, are Pemón Indians, and apparently
feel no need to go get wet walking through a landscape that is all too familiar
to them. I forgave them because they received us with a shot of Jiri Jara (the
local firewater) mixed with lime juice and lots of sugar, which really jolted
our metabolism out of deep freeze.
After lunch we spent a cold, damp, and long afternoon. I
read for a while inside my tent, but otherwise there was not much to do. I
consoled myself by thinking that today would have been the day of ascent, and
that instead of being inside my warm sleeping bag I could be bitching and
moaning crawling my way up the steep slopes. Yes, I think I will take a lazy
afternoon for a change.
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