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Here Are Mind-Blowing Facts About Kaieteur Falls You Didn’t Know

This breath-taking site is not just one of Guyana's best-kept secrets, but it's also one of South America's most amazing natural wonders. Here are mind-blowing facts about Kaieteur Falls

This breath-taking site is not just one of Guyana's best-kept secrets, but it's also one of South America's most amazing natural wonders. Kaieteur Falls is located within the Guianan moist forests ecoregion and features a very diverse range of fauna and flora. It has a 630 square kilometre total area (242 square miles).

It has a lot more facts that will leave you in amaze. The falls are not as popular as Victoria falls, but it has all the properties and uniqueness and hence it is a popular tourist attraction in Guyana or Kaieteur National Park.

Here are mind-blowing facts about Kaieteur Falls

Its actual location:

Due to its difficult access, because it is situated in a remote portion of the Guyana rainforest, Kaieteur Falls requires tourists to fly to the area's adjacent airport and then hike into the area. One of the major rivers in west-central Guyana is the Potaro River, which includes the Kaieteur Falls cascade. The Kaieteur falls have created an 8 km long valley that drops another 81 feet after a 741-foot vertical drop over the edge of a sandstone plateau. The vast Amazon Rainforest, which covers a large portion of this region in Guyana, is totally amazing. Only slightly more than 10,000 people reside in one of the small communities in this area, which has a total size of 20,051 square kilometers (7,742 square miles). In the centerpiece of Kaieteur National Park, the falls measure 300 to 350 feet in width at their highest point.

Kaieteur Falls

Superb accessibility:

The access to Kaieteur Falls, which is located in a remote area of Guyana, is excellent. Kaieteur International Airport, which is about 15 minutes' walk from the top of Kaieteur Falls and offers frequent flights to Ogle Airport and Georgetown's Cheddi Jagan International Airport, serves the park. Kaieteur Falls is one of the largest waterfalls on earth because of the sheer volume of water it produces per second, which amounts to about 651 cubic meters (23,000 cubic feet) of water. The most well-known feature of the "Kaieteur National Park" in Guyana is the breathtaking waterfall. Since its founding in 1929, this park has grown to rank among the most well-liked tourist destinations in the nation.

Not so famous but, unique in itself

The fact that Kaieteur Falls is much taller than it appears from a distance is one of the most stunning things about it. The vista becomes more astounding as you go closer. Given that Kaieteur Falls is a tremendous 741-foot waterfall, it is surprising that it is not more known. That is almost twice as high as Victoria Falls in southern Africa and four times higher than Niagara Falls in Canada. The fact that Kaieteur Falls is regarded as having the largest single-drop waterfall in the world indicates that the water does indeed flow across several tiers as it falls; in other words, there is a single enormous drop from the top of the waterfall to the bottom. Averaging 23,400 cubic feet of water gushing over the brink each second, Kaieteur Falls is one of the most powerful waterfalls in the entire world.

Its Discovery

It was difficult for explorers to locate this beautiful spectacle due to its distant position. Because of this, it took until 1870 for Europeans to rediscover it. Modern-day Guyana was still a British colony known as "British Guiana" at this time in history. As the colony's primary surveyor, a British geologist by the name of Charles Barrington Brown and his colleagues were the first to discover the magnificent waterfall. "Canoe and Camp life in British Guiana," a book he authored about his observations, was released in 1876. He added an illustration and goes into great detail about the waterfall.

Kaieteur Falls

How this fall got its name

There are two competing theories about the name of this enormous waterfall, but none of them can be verified. First, it is claimed that the word "Kaieteur" originates from the Patamona language, one of Guyana's numerous indigenous peoples. Old Man's Falls is approximately what "Kaieteur" implies because "Kai" means old man and "teur" means falls. According to legend, the Kaieteur was named after an elderly man whose family had been driven into the falls while they were in a boat by a relative. The falls were hence given the name "Kaieteur," which translates to "old man's fall". Second, according to some tales, the name is a tribute to Kai, a Patamona chieftain who, in a selfless act of devotion to Makonaima, the Great Spirit, paddled his canoe over a waterfall to save his people from being wiped out by another tribe. Kai's people gave the waterfall his name in honor of the leadership they had shown by making the sacrifice that assured their safety.

Read more about: south america waterfalls facts
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