Angel Falls Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
56 free Angel Falls trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Angel Falls trivia quiz covers the tallest uninterrupted waterfall on Earth from every angle: the numbers (979 metres in total, an 807-metre free plunge), the tepui it pours off, the national park and Venezuelan state that contain it, and the river system that eventually carries its water to the Orinoco. The easy questions are the ones any geography fan can get; from there it moves into the people who put the falls on the map. That means Jimmie Angel, the American bush pilot who flew over the falls in 1933 while hunting for ore and crash-landed his monoplane on top of the mountain four years later, then walked out with his wife over eleven days. It also means Aleksandrs Laime, the Latvian explorer who reached the base on foot and named the stream after a river back home, Ruth Robertson, the photojournalist whose 1949 expedition produced the official height, and the climbers, BASE jumpers and filmmakers who followed. Expect questions on the Pemon name Hugo Chávez wanted to restore, the South African waterfall that disputes the record, and the Pixar film whose Paradise Falls was modelled on this place. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the falls, Auyán-tepui, Canaima National Park and the explorers involved, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty-one questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 56 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The camp where trips to Angel Falls begin can be reached only how?
By air
By air. No road crosses the jungle to the lagoon-side camp, so visitors fly in on small planes and then head upriver by canoe.
Q 02Angel Falls is about as tall as three of which landmark?
Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower. Three of them would reach 990 metres against the falls' official 979, a figure a 1949 expedition surveyed after trekking to the foot of the drop.
Q 03Angel Falls' 807-metre plunge is almost as tall as which skyscraper?
Burj Khalifa
Burj Khalifa. Dubai's 828-metre tower would only just top the plunge, a drop so long that much of the water has turned to mist by the time it lands.
Q 04Angel Falls lies inside which Venezuelan national park?
Canaima
Canaima. The rivers that rise in the park feed the Guri Dam downstream, which generates a large share of Venezuela's electricity.
Q 05Which Venezuelan state contains Angel Falls?
Bolívar
Bolívar. Its capital, Ciudad Bolívar, was called Angostura until 1846, and it is the town where Angostura bitters were invented in 1824.
Q 06Jimmie Angel, the pilot who gave Angel Falls its name, came from which country?
United States
United States. Born in Missouri in 1899, he took up barnstorming with his brothers and by the 1920s was flying south of the border for a living.
Q 07What was Jimmie Angel searching for when he first flew over the falls?
A valuable ore bed
A valuable ore bed. He was guiding a mining company's expedition, and he spent the rest of his life hunting a 'river of gold' he claimed to have landed beside years before.
Q 08What went wrong when Angel tried to land on the tepui in 1937?
The wheels sank into marshy ground
The wheels sank into marshy ground. The touchdown looked perfect until the plane broke through the sod and stopped dead with its nose buried in the mud.
Q 09What was the name of the Flamingo monoplane Angel left stranded on the tepui in 1937?
El Río Caroní
El Río Caroní. After 33 years on the summit the plane was taken down, rebuilt and set on the grass in front of a city airport terminal.
Q 10Who lifted Angel's stranded plane off the tepui in 1970?
Venezuela's air force
Venezuela's air force. Its helicopters brought the plane down in pieces, and it was restored at the air force's aviation museum in Maracay.
Q 11Unverified legends have Jimmie Angel working as an aviation scout for which famous British officer?
Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia. Other tales made Angel a First World War ace and the founder of a Chinese warlord's air force; his family's researchers could verify none of them.
Q 12After Jimmie Angel died in 1956, what did his family do at the falls in 1960?
Scattered his ashes there
Scattered his ashes there. His widow Marie and their two sons took the remains from an aviators' shrine and released them over the falls, as he had asked.
Q 13Scientists have long called the tepuis by the title of which adventure novel?
The Lost World
Q 21An anteater, an armadillo and an otter found in the park around Angel Falls all share which word in their names?
Giant
Giant. All three are listed as threatened species, the giant otter after decades of hunting for its fur.
Q 22Which BBC nature series filmed Angel Falls from a helicopter for its 'Fresh Water' episode?
Planet Earth
Planet Earth. The 2006 episode follows fresh water from the daily downpours on the tepuis to the sea, pausing to show the whole height of the falls from the air.
Q 23Botanists have recorded an estimated 500 species of which flower in the park around Angel Falls?
Orchids
Orchids. One orchid hunter who combed Auyán-tepui in the 1960s published his findings under the title 'home of fifty million orchids'.
The Lost World. Conan Doyle's 1912 adventure put living dinosaurs on a cliff-walled South American plateau, and the name stuck to the real tablelands.
Q 14The thin, nutrient-poor soils on tepui summits have favoured which unusual kind of plant?
Carnivorous plants
Carnivorous plants. With so little nourishment in the rock, pitcher plants, sundews and bladderworts trap insects instead, and many of them grow nowhere else.
Q 15What at Angel Falls is named after Aleksandrs Laime, the Latvian explorer who cut the first trail to its foot?
The main viewpoint
The main viewpoint. Mirador Laime is the outcrop facing the falls where visitors stop to photograph them; Laime walked to the foot by himself in the 1940s, then guided the party that measured the drop.
Q 16Which museum sent an expedition up Auyán-tepui within months of Angel's 1937 landing there?
American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History. Funded by a Caracas businessman and birdwatcher, its team spent three months on the tepui collecting its birds, reptiles and flora.
Q 17Ruth Robertson's account of her 1949 expedition to Angel Falls ran in which magazine?
National Geographic
National Geographic. Four earlier overland attempts had failed; her party reached the foot of the falls on 12 May 1949 and brought back the first measurement of its height.
Q 18Angel Falls' Spanish name, Salto Ángel, became official in 1939 by appearing where?
On a government map
On a government map. A presidential decree had ordered the little-known region surveyed, and the map in the 1939 report was the first to print the name.
Q 19A four-man team first did what at Angel Falls in 1971?
Climbed the face
Climbed the face. Led by Pittsburgh engineer George Bogel, the four spent about ten days on the wall, and one of them, Englishman David Nott, wrote it up as Angels Four.
Q 20Angel Falls is the best-known landmark of which South American highland region?
The Guiana Highlands
The Guiana Highlands. Rain falls there in nearly every season, and it runs off tabletop mountains capped with rock hard enough to keep a sheer edge.
Q 24Paradise Falls in which Pixar film was inspired mainly by Angel Falls?
Up
Up. To get the look right, director Pete Docter and a team of Pixar artists travelled to Venezuela's tepuis and climbed one to sketch and paint the scenery.
Q 25Which tepui did Pete Docter's Pixar team climb on their research trip to Venezuela?
Mount Roraima
Mount Roraima. Unlike its sheer-sided neighbours it has a natural ramp to the summit, which makes it the easiest of the tepuis to climb.
Q 26Which 2015 action remake shows characters free-climbing beside Angel Falls?
Point Break
Point Break. The scene was filmed on the real cliffs beside the falls, with the crew ferrying its equipment up the river by canoe.
Q 27Which Robin Williams film shot some of its scenes at Angel Falls?
What Dreams May Come
What Dreams May Come. The 1998 afterlife fantasy was shot mostly in California and Montana, with a short trip to Venezuela for the falls, and it won the Oscar for visual effects.
Q 28Which 1990 creature feature shows scientists flying past Angel Falls?
Arachnophobia
Arachnophobia. Its scientists fly past the falls to collect specimens, and the Californian town where the deadly spider ends up is jokingly named after the national park.
Q 29What did Jimmie Angel leave in his stranded plane before abandoning it on the tepui in 1937?
A written note
A written note. It explained the landing and the party's departure, in case the search planes they were expecting found the aircraft first.
Q 30What did Hugo Chávez announce he intended to do about the falls in 2009?
Restore an indigenous name
Restore an indigenous name. 'This is ours, long before Angel ever arrived there,' he told viewers of his weekly television show, though he later said he would not decree the change.