Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world, concentrated substantially in the Orinoco Belt, a resource that fuelled significant economic growth and modernisation through much of the 20th century and made Venezuela, for a period, one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. That oil-driven prosperity has proven volatile in more recent decades, with falling oil prices and broader economic mismanagement contributing to a severe economic crisis and significant emigration from the country since the mid-2010s, a stark contrast to its earlier decades of relative affluence.
Angel Falls, in Venezuela’s remote Canaima National Park, is the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world, dropping 979 metres from the flat-topped tepui mountain of Auyantepui, and takes its English name from Jimmie Angel, an American aviator who landed a plane near its base in 1937 while searching for gold deposits, though the falls were of course long known to the region’s Indigenous Pemon people well before his arrival.
A Landscape of Ancient Flat-Topped Mountains
Venezuela’s tepuis, flat-topped table mountains rising dramatically from the surrounding rainforest, are among the oldest geological formations on Earth, some dating back nearly two billion years, their isolated summits having evolved largely separate ecosystems over millions of years due to their extreme inaccessibility. These distinctive formations are widely believed to have partly inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World, imagining prehistoric creatures surviving in isolation atop just such an isolated plateau.
Lake Maracaibo, in northwestern Venezuela, experiences one of the highest rates of lightning activity recorded anywhere on Earth, a near-nightly phenomenon known locally as the Catatumbo lightning, visible from great distances and significant enough that it once served as a navigational aid for sailors.
Painting Tepuis Rising From the Jungle
Venezuela’s ancient flat-topped tepuis and cascading waterfalls give a watercolourist dramatic natural scale and rich green colour to work with. We’ve captured that character in our own Venezuela Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of South America for a wall at home.
Home to both the world’s largest oil reserves and its tallest waterfall, Venezuela remains a country whose natural wealth has always come in more than one form.