Kaieteur Falls

Kaieteur Falls

The Kaieteur is the largest single drop waterfall in the world. It is found in Kaieteur National Park, on the Potaro River, in a part of the Amazon rainforest in the Potaro-Siparuni region of Guyana. The falls is one of Guyana's main tourist attractions. The height from the point where the sandstone and conglomerate break through the rock to the first fault is 226 meters. Afterwards, it flows through a series of steep cascades, which, when included in the measurements, raise the total height to 251 meters. Kaieteur is one of the world's most powerful waterfalls with its 663 cubic meters per second average flow. There is a Patamona Indian legend that Kaieteur Falls is named after Chief Kai, or Toshao, who sacrificially paddled across the falls to save his people by paddling for Makonaima, the great spirit. According to another legend, the Kaieteur is named after an annoying old man who was put in a boat by his relatives and pushed into a waterfall. That's how the waterfall got the name "Kaieteur", which means "old man-fall". The Kaieteur Falls is approximately four and a half times as high as Niagara Falls on the Canada-US border, and it is about twice as high as Victoria Falls on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border in Africa.