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One of world's highest waterfalls discovered
A German explorer says he's found one of the world's highest waterfalls in Peru's isolated northern jungle.
A German explorer says he's found one of the world's highest waterfalls in Peru's isolated northern jungle.
Stefan Ziemendorff on Monday led a local television camera crew to the falls, which he says he found in 2002 in the Department of Amazonas, about 650 kilometers north of the capital, Lima.
The waterfall has rarely been seen by anyone, due to its remote location and legends that it is haunted by a mystical siren have kept the native population at bay for hundreds of years.
The waterfall measures "seven hundred and seventy one meters, with a margin of error of thirteen and a half meters," Ziemendorff told Peru's state-run Channel 7 television.
At that height, the waterfall would be hundreds of meters short of the world's highest, but still impressive. The highest falls are Salto del Angel (Angel's Leap) in Venezuela, which measures 972 meters, and South Africa's Tugela Falls, which are 948 meters high.
