Explorer blazes New trails in Venezuelan

By Ian James

updated 8:23 p.m. ET May 11, 2007

CHIMANTA TEPUI, Venezuela — Charles Brewer Carias has discovered giant sinkholes, collected new species of plants and scorpions, and rappelled into unexplored caves on his nearly 200 expeditions into the flat-topped mountains and jungles of Venezuela.

The mustachioed 68-year-old says his passion for discovery makes him a throwback to the 19th century explorers who once trekked through South America. And he has found his modern-day Eden among the sandstone plateaus of Venezuela, known as "tepuis," which tower above rain forests and savannas.

Brewer has spent much of his life learning to spot subtle anomalies in this rugged landscape, which is home to Angel Falls — the world's tallest waterfall — and was the setting of Arthur Conan Doyle's famous dinosaur novel "The Lost World."

"The idea of discovery is to see things that no one has seen before," says Brewer, who calls the tepuis "islands in time," each of them isolated much like the Galapagos Islands, allowing evolution to run its distinct course on every mountaintop.

His knowledge and keen abilities of observation have made Brewer the best-known explorer and naturalist in Venezuela.

Flying by helicopter, he gazes down at the tepuis searching for changes in vegetation, rivers disappearing into holes or other clues that could point to a landing spot for his next expedition.

This time he is headed to the site of one of his grandest discoveries: a giant quartzite cave in the belly of a plateau, which he is exploring with the help of scientists from Slovakia and Croatia.

Five years ago, he spotted a river emerging from this cave while flying past. He returned with a team to hike into it, and found what experts believe to be the world's biggest quartzite cave. The group named it after Brewer.

Measured at nearly 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) long, the cave runs along a river through chambers at times up to 40 meters (130 feet) high. The explorers pause to examine amphibious crickets, rare scorpions and odd mineral deposits called speleothems that grow like coral reefs from the cave floor.

"That's a beautiful piece," Brewer exclaims, squatting to photograph one of the chalky opal speleothems, which scientists believe are built up by bacteria over time.

A total of 22 species _ plants, reptiles, insects and a scorpion _ have been named in Brewer's honor, including an entirely new genus of bromeliad, with glossy leaves and white flowers, which he found in 1981.

He also has explored underwater, leading a 1998 scuba expedition to a sunken fleet of 17th-century French ships off Venezuela's Las Aves Islands.

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