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The champion in height is the Angel jump, in the south of Venezuela. There, the water of the Churún River plummets 979 meters from the top of the Auyan Tepui mountain — suggestively, “devil’s mountain”, in the dialect of the local Indians. Embedded in a rocky plateau in the Amazon rainforest, it was named after its discoverer, the American adventurer James Angel. Aboard a small single engine, Angel spotted the waterfall in 1937, during an expedition in search of gold. He tried to land near the top, but got stuck in a swamp and lost in the jungle for 11 days. If Salto Angel is the undisputed champion in terms of height, when it comes to volume of water, first place goes to the Iguazu Falls, on the border between Brazil and Argentina.
They have an average flow of 1,756 cubic meters per second, an amount that can increase dramatically during the summer rains, between November and March. “In the 1983 floods, flows of 35,000 cubic meters per second were recorded,” says hydrologist (specialist in water resources) Heinz Dieter Fill, from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
The name of the falls could not be more appropriate: in the language of the Guarani Indians, Iguaçu means “big water”. Fifteen kilometers before joining the Paraná River, the Iguaçu River overcomes an average drop of 65 meters, rushing into a narrow canyon with 270 falls. The first to describe the falls was Spanish explorer Álvar Nuñes Cabeza de Vaca, who narrowly escaped having his boat swallowed by the ferocity of the falls in 1541, as he was traveling down the Iguazú River looking for a route to Asuncion, Paraguay.
Until the end of the 19th century, Niagara Falls, on the border of the United States and Canada, was considered the waterfall with the largest volume of water in the world. However, the construction of three hydroelectric plants, which diverted part of the river, reduced the flow of the falls, which today is around 1,000 cubic meters per second.