Below us was the vast rain forest of Amazonia, the arboreal heartland of our planet. The place a person could descend from the Andes mountains, enter the Amazon forest and walk for 2,000 miles before seeing the sun again. The greenery was interrupted only by serpentine-shaped rivers and streams, all stained a dark cola color by decaying vegetation. I had the novel open in my lap, and even though Conan Doyle had actually visited the area only in his imagination, many of his descriptions rang true.
Plateaus rise thousands of feet straight out of the jungle.
The remote Indian village of Kavak where we stayed. The tepuis are mystical, ancient islands above the clouds, with silver waterfalls plummeting from their flanks into the green depths below. The plane suddenly banked, the clouds parted, and cameras clicked. Dropping from the top of a towering tepui was Angel Falls, named after American pilot and adventurer Jimmy Angel, the first non-native to glimpse the falls while on an aerial survey to find diamonds and gold in 1937. Our pilot now took us in for a closer look at the world's highest waterfall.