I had been in Caracas, Venezuela for less than three hours when Alfredo, a local to the area, turned to Cory and I and somewhat casually said, 'Don't talk to anyone, don't let anyone know that you're foreign and try not to be seen by anyone; bad people live here.'

Alfredo is an experienced climber who was my partner on Lost Arrow Spire, Half Dome and Salathe Wall in Yosemite earlier this year. Cory Nauman the third member of our team is another climbing friend with whom I climbed the Muir Wall that same season.  

After having flown in from Australia, and Cory from America, it was a shock to find ourselves waking up in the middle of one of Caracas's roughest ghettos . . . alone. We were staying in a house belonging to Amelio, a friend of Alfredo's. The windows were covered with burglar bars and the front gate locked with heavy-duty chains. Set within a U-shaped valley of jungle-covered mountains, Caracas has one of the highest murder rates in the world and we spent three days locked up in the slums while Alfredo went about the city organising last-minute equipment, food and travel arrangements. He was also sorting out the logistics of getting us to one of the most remote parts of Venezuela, La Gran Sabana, located in the south of the country, while Cory and I were kept imprisoned at Amelio's house.

Our plan was to establish a new route on the unclimbed south face of the Upuigma Tepui, which was first climbed in 2001 by John Arran, Ivan Calderon and Steve Backshall. Located in the Canaima National Park on the Venezuelan side of the border with Brazil and Guiana, this area is home to some of the world's most majestic big walls in incredibly remote and unexplored terrain. These tepuis, with their characteristic flat tops and sheer sandstone flanks up to 600 metres tall, burst dramatically above the rain forest. A land lost in time.

From Ciudad Bolivar we chartered a tiny Cessna aircraft to the heart of La Gran Sabana. As we flew, the landscape changed from concrete, smog-filled cities to vast open grassland plateaus followed by pristine virgin jungles with flowing river systems. As we dropped through the cloud, a tepui came into view and almost in unison we were all shouting and pointing, the excitement in the plane palpable. On our descent into the native Pemon Indian village of Yunek, we could see waterfalls cascading down sheer walls and feeding the jungles below. The whole party fell silent, mesmerized by the towering band of compact sandstone cliffs that make up the impressive Acopan Tepui. Even before the rotors had stopped turning, the entire village ran to greet us. Around fifty Peomon Indians dressed in well-worn clothes surrounded us. The villagers were initially shy and kept their distance, but through the power of universal sign language and broken Spanish, we found them to be warm and welcoming. Alfredo met with the friendly village chief, Leonardo, and managed to hire two porters for the two-day hike to a base camp below the wall.