🇻🇪 Venezuela · Guayana and Gran Sabana
Salto Kamá, known in Pemón as Kamá Merú ('merú' means waterfall), is one of the most emblematic and accessible waterfalls in the Gran Sabana. It drops hard from a rock step into a pool in the savanna, right beside Highway 10 (Troncal 10), inside Canaima National Park, which makes it a classic stop on any trip through the region.
Its water, darkened by tannins from the vegetation, falls some 50 meters surrounded by grassland and scrub, forming a classic Gran Sabana postcard. There's usually a camp on site run by the Pemón community, with viewpoints, churuatas and basic services.
This guide covers the essentials of Salto Kamá: what the waterfall is like, how and when to visit, what services and real prices you'll find, and how to fit it into a Gran Sabana itinerary.
Salto Kamá (Kamá Merú) is an emblematic waterfall in the Gran Sabana, beside Highway 10, in Pemón territory and inside Canaima National Park. Its name, like those of so many waterfalls in the region, comes from the Pemón language. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Venezuela's largest state: home of the tepuis and Angel Falls — the world's tallest waterfall — of La Gran Sabana and the Pemón people, of Bolívar's Angostura Address, of Orinoco gold, of the Guri dam and the heavy industry of Ciudad Guayana.
Read the history of Bolívar →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Anyone driving Highway 10 toward Santa Elena de Uairén hears Salto Kamá before seeing it: a roar of dark water that suddenly appears beside the road, dropping over a step of rock in the middle of the endless savanna. The Gran Sabana is, above all, a land of water. Countless rivers and streams run across its upland and, on meeting the steps and edges of the ancient Guiana Shield, plunge into a multitude of waterfalls. Salto Kamá, or Kamá Merú, is one of the most emblematic and best known in this corner of southeastern Venezuela, inside Canaima National Park.
A distinctive feature of this water is its dark color, almost like tea or red wine. That tone isn't pollution but the natural presence of tannins, substances released by the vegetation and organic matter of the savanna and the forests around it. Dark water falling over rock, with its white foam, creates the contrast typical of Gran Sabana waterfalls.
The names of many of these falls, Kamá Merú included, come from the language of the Pemón people, who have named every feature of their territory for centuries. The word 'merú' means precisely waterfall, so the region is dotted with 'merús' that punctuate the landscape and the routes through it.
Salto Kamá forms on the course of the Kamá river, a tributary in the basin draining this part of the Gran Sabana toward the Kukenán river system and, further on, toward the Caroní. The waterfall occurs where the riverbed meets an outcrop of Precambrian basement rock of the Guiana Shield - sandstones and associated rocks more than a billion years old - which the water hasn't managed to erode at the same rate as the surrounding ground, creating the step over which the river tumbles.
One peculiarity of Salto Kamá is that its drop splits into two arms, separated by a mass of rock jutting out at the lip, giving it a distinctive outline compared with other falls in the region, which are usually a single curtain of water. At about 50 meters high, it's one of the Gran Sabana's mid-sized falls: smaller than giants like Angel Falls, but far more accessible, since you don't need a multi-day expedition to see it.
Its flow varies markedly between the dry and rainy seasons, as with most watercourses on the upland, which depend almost entirely on seasonal rainfall to keep their volume up.
Salto Kamá lies in the territory of the Pemón people, the original inhabitants of the Gran Sabana. There is usually a camp on site run by the community, with churuatas - the traditional palm-roofed buildings - viewpoints over the waterfall and basic services for visitors, such as food and crafts for sale or the option of staying overnight.
Camps of this kind represent a form of community tourism that has developed in the Gran Sabana since the late 20th century, in which Pemón communities take part directly in tourism, providing guides, accommodation, food and crafts. It's a source of livelihood and a way of ensuring the benefits of tourism reach the people who live in and look after the territory, a model replicated at several points along Highway 10.
For visitors, stopping at Salto Kamá isn't only about enjoying a waterfall but also about a small encounter with Pemón culture and a chance to support the community. Spending money at the camp, respecting local rules and customs and asking permission before photographing people are all part of visiting responsibly.
What sets Salto Kamá apart from many other waterfalls in the region is how easy it is to reach. While numerous Gran Sabana falls and tepuis require long walks or full expeditions, Kamá Merú sits beside Highway 10, the road that crosses the region toward the Brazilian border, which has made it a convenient and near-obligatory stop ever since that stretch was paved, between the 1970s and 1990s.
As a result, Salto Kamá has become one of the visual icons of the Gran Sabana, featuring on almost every tourist itinerary in the area. Its image - dark water falling in the middle of the savanna - sums up much of the region's appeal: water, ancient rock and open horizons.
As part of Canaima National Park, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, Salto Kamá shares the protection and the natural value of this extraordinary territory. For many travelers it's their first close encounter with the waterfalls of the Gran Sabana, an unforgettable postcard from southern Venezuela.
Sitting directly on the main road, Salto Kamá receives far more visitors than the Gran Sabana's more remote waterfalls, which raises particular conservation challenges. Managing the site falls largely to the Pemón community itself, which administers access, maintains the paths and viewpoints, and tries to balance tourism with looking after the environment.
As elsewhere in Canaima National Park, environmental authorities and communities promote responsible tourism practices: leave no rubbish, don't disturb the channel or the rock formations, and keep to the areas marked for swimming. The fragility of savanna ecosystems and the thin soils over ancient rock mean that any impact, however minor it seems, takes a very long time to undo.
In that sense Salto Kamá is a representative case of how an easily reached natural attraction can become a local economic engine without losing its ecological value, provided visitor numbers are managed carefully and in constant dialogue with the people who live there.
On top of that sits a larger challenge hanging over the whole region: the pressure of illegal gold and diamond mining, which in recent decades has advanced across the rivers and Pemón territories of the Gran Sabana, polluting water and straining community life. In that context, every community camp like Kamá's, which lives on responsible tourism rather than mining, also represents a bet on a different future for the territory: one in which the dark water of the merú keeps falling clean over the rock, and in which it is the Pemón themselves who decide how their land is shown and cared for.