Venezuela is epic in proportion: it boasts South America's largest lake and third-longest river, the highest waterfall in the world, the longest of all snakes, and some of the most spectacular landscapes you'll ever see.

There are the snowcapped peaks of the Andes in the west; steamy Amazonian jungles in the south; the hauntingly beautiful Gran Sabana plateau, with its strange flat-topped mountains, in the east; and miles of white-sand beaches fringed with coconut palms on the Caribbean coast.