In the spring of 1982, Jorge Delano, a Venezuelan businessman and fledgling balloon pilot, led an expedition to the jungle highlands in the remote south eastern corner of his country.He was planning the first hot air balloon ascension in Venezuela, and he was determined that it was going to be a memorable flight. His idea was to fly his two balloons up the face of the highest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls, an ascent of five thousand feet from the jungle floor to a landing on the vast and mysterious mesa of the fall’s source.

Over the next three years, Delano organized and led a series of similar expeditions to other remote wilderness areas of his country, eat of them presenting pilots and crew with a challenging combination of weather and terrain.. They would be flying where no one ever had before, in conditions that would stretch men and flying systems to their limits.

From the jungle plateaus associated with Conan Doyle’s “Lost World”; from the windswept Caribbean archipelago of Los Roques; from the thin air at the height of the Venezuelan Andes and from the steamy depths of the great holes of Sari Sari Nama, the four expeditions chronicled in this film represent the natural wonders of a wild South American landscape still largely undiscovered by outsiders.

Delano assembled and international team for these dangerous flights: helicopter and fixed wing pilots, support and rescue crews from Venezuela and from the United States, two veteran balloonist, Brian Boland and Kathy Wadsworth, and a film crew led by Scott Salter. The story of these expeditions is also the story of these individuals overcoming their differences, in language, temperament and experience, in trying to realize Delano’s dream.

“Above The Lost World” is the record of four daring flights in the skies of Venezuela, the chronicle of one man’s rediscovery of the wild glories of his country.