The Río Carrao is the brown jungle river that carries the boats from Canaima up towards Angel Falls. The trip is part of the experience: hours in a long wooden curiara, motor humming, threading between low forested banks and the dark walls of distant tepuis. Crocodiles sun themselves on the sandbars, kingfishers dart along the water, and the river opens out in long calm reaches between short stretches of rapids.
At Mayupa rapids the boats are often unloaded and the passengers walk overland while the boatmen run the empty curiaras through — a small piece of theatre that breaks the morning. A second river, the Río Churún, joins it lower down and carries the final approach into the Angel Falls canyon. The whole journey is six to eight hours each way.