Aleksandrs Laime

After moving to Venezuela in 1940, Laime led many explorations through the jungles of the south of the country. During his first years in Venezuela, Laime worked as a topographer for a road construction department, and later he worked for the oil company Socony and Ingenerie de Orinoko. In 1942, Laime visited Canaima for the first time, and he settled there. Together with Charles Baughan and some other European partners, they started to develop tourism in Canaima and built an airfield and houses for visitors. In 1949, he was part of Ruth Robertson's team that reached Angel Falls by ground and surveyed the falls.^[2] He reached the summit of Auyantepui in 1955, and, along with his native companion Manuel Fiorentino, were the first to reach Jimmie Angel's crashed plane "Flamingo."^[4] Laime explored the surface of the tepui, and named formerly unnamed rivers there. He gave the river on which Angel Falls is located the name Gauja, after the Latvian river of the same name.^[4] It is sometimes written as Río Gauya. He also named three other rivers, Río Venta, Río Daugava and Río Ogre, all after celebrated rivers of Latvia. He was married to Vilma Laime, who died in April 2009 at her residence in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, and is survived by his son Alexander Laime, stepdaughter Ilse Wood, grandchildren Robert Wood Jr. and Sandra Jones, and great-grandchildren, Rachel Wood, Carissa Wood, Zackary Wood, and Richard Jones, all of whom reside in the states of Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

After hearing news of Jimmie Angel's famed "Golden River", Laime, like many of his contemporaries, went in search of the river. He never publicized if he actually found it, but close friends claim that he actually had found it. After Laime's death in 1994, approximately $20,000 were found in a tin can, underneath Laime's fireplace in his house on Isla Orquidea (an island on the Río Carrao, two hours upstream from Canaima).

Laime came down the Churun River on March 20, 1994, to stockpile food and supplies for the next few weeks, as he usually did. He spoke to the wife of Ramón Jiménez, asking for him. He complained to her about chest pains, and said that he knew that the end was near. He is reported as saying that he wanted to climb the great tepui (Auyantepui) one last time, to die up there. He then went to the nearby Waku Lodge for a drink. He died shortly thereafter in the bathroom, having had a heart attack.

• Stavro, Andris., "Aleksandrs Laime un viņa zelta upe" (Apgāds Jāņa Sēta, Rīga, 1999, ISBN 9984-07-184-7)
• Personal account of Maria Jimenez, March 13, 2008

• Well-known Latvian Adventurers Archived 2011-05-18 at the Wayback Machine
• Commentary about meeting Laime^{[dead link]}