Top Attractions in Venezuela

A national-park reef archipelago 35 minutes' flight from Caracas: bone-white shadeless beaches, world-class diving and some of the Caribbean's best game fishing.

The world's highest and longest cable car: from Mérida's spring-like valley up to snow-capped Pico Espejo, with Venezuela's highest peak — Pico Bolívar, 5,007 m — filling the window.

Plaza Bolívar and its quarter: the 19th-century Capitolio, the 17th-century Catedral, the gilded altars of San Francisco (1575) — the old heart of a five-million-person capital under the Waraira Repano mountains.

The world's highest waterfall: 979 metres off the rim of Auyantepui, 807 of them in a single free fall — named for bush pilot Jimmie Angel, who put it on the map in 1935.

A 30,000-square-kilometre UNESCO park of table mountains and falling water, entered through a palm-fringed lagoon with pink-sand beaches and a skyline of half a dozen waterfalls.