INTRODUCTION

The Lost World is a region in southeastern Venezuela, South America, where three countries, and three great watersheds meet. It's part of the oldest rock on the planet, dating back to the super-continents of Gondwana and Pangea: over 2 billion years' old.

Above swathes of savannah and forest, angular-shouldered mesa mountains rise. And across this ancient landscape course hundreds of rivers, scored by dozens of cataracts and falls.

The mountains, called tepuys by the indigenous Pemon Indians, are revered as mystical places, the lairs of mischevious spirits and malevolent gods.

The Lost World was thought to harbour the mythical Lake Manoa and the city of El Dorado. It remained terra incognita until well into the nineteenth century, when Victorian explorers first began to report on its wonders.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired by these accounts to pen his classic adventure yarn, The Lost World, in 1912.

Nearly one hundred years later, much of the region and many of its mountains remain unexplored, the redoubt of rare creatures and isolated Pemon settlements.

It is, without doubt, one of the most remote, fragile and unique landscapes on Earth.