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Coverage / Venezuela

Venezuela

South America

A country of extraordinary natural range, from the Caribbean cays of Los Roques to the Andes above Merida and the ancient tepui tablelands of the Gran Sabana, where Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, drops from Auyantepui in Canaima National Park. Political and economic crisis has thinned tourism to a few resilient niches served by established local operators. Travel is under a Level 3 Reconsider Travel advisory, with Level 4 Do Not Travel zones (Amazonas, Apure, the Colombia border) that do not include these sites.

4 activities · 4 pairings · 5 verified providers

What you can do in Venezuela

Kitesurfing

Los RoquesJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun JulLos Roques is a flat-water kiter's dream, and it stays uncrowded because you can only reach it by a light aircraft from Caracas. Inside the reef the lagoon is a huge sheet of warm, shallow turquoise water, waist to chest deep over white sand, so beginners have a soft, forgiving place to learn and improvers can ride for hours without a swell to fight. The trade winds blow most reliably from around December to July, and the classic day out is a downwind kite safari, launching near Gran Roque village and riding between the outer sandbanks and empty cays with a boat shadowing you. There is no big development here, just a scatter of family-run posadas on Gran Roque, the national park around you and the wind. Add fine snorkelling, bonefishing on the flats and diving on the reef and it becomes an easy place to build a trip around a week of kiting.

Paragliding

MeridaJan Feb Mar Apr DecMerida is the adventure capital of Venezuela, and paragliding is its signature flight. The city sits in a deep Andean valley with the Sierra Nevada on one side and the Sierra La Culata on the other, which gives reliable thermals and a string of launch sites at different heights. The classic beginner flight is a tandem strapped in front of an experienced pilot: you launch from a ridge west of the city, such as La Trampa or Las Gonzales, or high up on the cable-car line at Loma Redonda, and glide down over patchwork farms, red-tiled villages and the green valley floor, with the snow line and Pico Bolivar above you. Flights range from a gentle sink of fifteen or twenty minutes to long thermic sessions when conditions are right. The same agencies that fly you can put together a week of rafting, canyoning and mountain trips, and Merida's low prices and student-town energy make it an easy place to spend time.

River Cruising / Scenic Float

CanaimaJun Jul Aug Sep Oct NovThe journey to the base of Angel Falls is one of the great river trips in South America. You fly in to Canaima, a Pemon village on a red-water lagoon ringed by its own falls, and from there travel by curiara, a long motorised dugout canoe, up the Rio Carrao and into the Canyon of the Churun. For hours the boat threads between the vertical walls of the tepuis, the flat-topped mountains that gave Canaima its Lost World name, until Auyantepui rises ahead and the thread of Angel Falls appears down its face. A short forest walk from the river camp reaches a viewpoint and a pool at the base. The trip runs in the wet season, when the rivers are high enough to pass the rapids and the falls are in full flow, and most itineraries add nights at Pemon-run lodges in the Kamarata Valley. It is remote, weather-dependent expedition travel, and reaching the tallest waterfall on earth this way earns it.

Trekking / Hiking

Mount RoraimaJan Feb Mar Apr Nov DecMount Roraima is one of the world's great treks and one of the strangest landscapes on the planet. From the savanna of the Gran Sabana the tepui rises as a two-kilometre wall of rock, and the only walkable way up is a natural rock ramp on the southwest face, the route the Pemon have always used. The standard trip is six days from the village of Paraitepui: two days across open grassland and river crossings to a base camp under the wall, a hard climb up the ramp into the cloud, and two days exploring a summit world of wind-carved black rock, crystal-strewn valleys, quartz pools and tiny endemic plants and frogs found nowhere else. Nights are cold and camps are basic, tucked into rock overhangs called hotels. A licensed guide is mandatory and independent trekking is not allowed, so you go with a Pemon crew who carry, cook and read the mountain's fast-changing weather. Few places reward the effort like this one, and almost no one is up there with you.

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Kitesurfing
Paragliding
River Cruising
Trekking