World's Strangest Natural Wonders
Spotted Lake, British Columbia
It looks almost as if you could play Twister on Spotted Lake near
Osoyoos, less than a mile from the Washington State border. Each summer,
most of the water in this mineral-rich lake evaporates, leaving behind
large concentrations of salt, titanium, calcium, sulfates, and other
minerals that form a polka-dot pattern in shades of green, yellow, and
brown circles of varying size. The lake is a sacred site to the First
Nations of the Okanagan Valley, and the land on which it sits is private
property owned by the Indian Affairs Department. You won’t actually be
able to get up close to the lake, but you can get a good look from the
nearby road.
Marble Caves, Chile
Six thousand years of wave erosion created the undulating patterns
that give these caves their marbleized effect, enhanced by the
reflection of the blue and green water of Carrera Lake, near Chile’s
border with Argentina. Although the area is threatened by a plan to
build a dam nearby, for now, visitors can kayak throughout the caves on
days when the waters are calm.
Lake Retba, Senegal
It looks as if someone poured a giant bottle of Pepto-Bismol into
Lake Retba—that’s how deeply pink these waters are. The color is
actually caused by a particular kind of algae called Dunaliella salina
that produces a pigment. The salt content is extremely high, reaching
40 percent in some spots and allowing the algae to thrive (and swimmers
to float effortlessly on the surface of the 10-foot-deep lake). Blinding
white piles of salt line the shores, and locals work several hours a
day harvesting salt from the bright pink water.
Asbyrgi Canyon, Iceland
Legend has it that the Asbyrgi Canyon in northern Iceland was created
when the hoof of a Norse god’s horse touched the earth, slicing through
300-foot-tall cliffs and flattening an area just over two miles long
and more than a half mile wide. The likelier scientific explanation is
that two periods of glacial flooding carved the canyon between 3,000 and
10,000 years ago. But standing atop the cliffs, with the green carpet
of the horseshoe-shaped canyon spread before you, it’s fun to imagine
otherwise.
Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
When a prehistoric lake dried up about 30,000 years ago, it left an
endless expanse of white hexagonal tiles that stretch to the horizon.
Welcome to the world’s largest salt flat, stretching for 4,000 square
miles—25 times the size of Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. The site
provides more than 25,000 tons of salt per year to local miners,
supports a thriving community of thousands of flamingos, and attracts
tourists who can check into the Palacio de Sal, a 16-room hotel made entirely from salt blocks.
Travertine Pools at Pamukkale, Turkey
People have sought the reputed healing effects of bathing here for
thousands of years. The water that flows from 17 subterranean hot
springs into the pools has an extremely high concentration of calcium
carbonate, which forms soft deposits when it hits the surface. Those
viscous white deposits harden over time until the springs resemble a
fountain made of chalk or, as indicated by the poetic translation of
Pamukkale, a “cotton castle” visible from more than 10 miles away.
Sailing Stones, Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, CA
No one has ever seen one of the “sailing stones” on Death Valley’s
Racetrack Playa move, but evidence of their travels is visible in the
long track marks that trail behind them in the dusty ground. Scientists
aren’t sure exactly how the rocks—which can weigh hundreds of
pounds—make their way across the dry lake bed. The prevailing theory is
that when the rocks are wet or icy, they’re pushed along the flat playa
by strong winds. The deep groove marks they leave behind indicate they
may travel up to 700 feet from their point of origin.
White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), Egypt
Bulbous white rocks in strange shapes and sizes rise from the desert
about 28 miles north of the town of Farafra in western Egypt—a cluster
of mushrooms here, a herd of half-melted snowmen over there. Their
appearance isn’t due to some avant-garde stone sculptor, but rather
thanks to the wind. When the ancient sea that once covered the land
dried up, the remaining sediment layer began to break down. The softer
spots crumbled away, and over time, powerful sandstorms shaped the
harder rocks into their current forms.
Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand
The spherical stones that line New Zealand’s Moeraki Beach reach up
to seven feet in diameter and have been compared to everything from the
marbles of giants to colossal dinosaur eggs to half-submerged
prehistoric turtles, ready to stand up and shake off the sand at any
moment. They’re actually concretions, masses of compacted sediment
formed below ground more than 50 million years ago. As the sand that
surrounds them erodes, they seem to rise to the surface as if pushed up
from the center of the earth. The stones are also found on Bowling Ball Beach in Mendocino, CA, as well as elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada and Russia.
Caño Cristales River, Colombia
Folks make the journey into central Colombia’s Serranéa de la
Macarena national park to see why Caño Cristales has inspired nicknames
like the River of Five Colors, the Liquid Rainbow, and even the Most
Beautiful River in the World. It’s important to get the timing right:
when the water reaches the perfect levels (usually between July and
December), it becomes a kaleidoscope of pink, green, blue, and yellow as
a plant called the Macarenia clavigera, which lives on the river floor, gets the sun it needs to bloom into an explosion of colors
The Eye of the Sahara (Richat Structure), Mauritania
This enormous depression, circular in shape and stretching 25 miles
wide, is like a bull’s-eye mark in the middle of an otherwise flat and
featureless area of Mauritania desert. Visible from space, it has been a
landmark for astronauts since the earliest missions. The Eye isn’t the
result of any target practice by aliens; rather, it formed as winds
eroded the different layers of sediment, quartzite, and other rocks at
varying depths.
The Stone Forest (Shilin), China
Many of the trees within the forest in China’s remote Yunnan Province
are rock hard, literally. The area, which spans nearly 200 square
miles, was underwater 270 million years ago, and the sea floor was
covered with limestone sediment. Gradually, the seabed rose and the
water dried up. As rain and wind eroded the weaker rock, the stronger
limestone spires began to take shape. Now they rise skyward, surrounded
by leafy trees.
Blood Falls, Antarctica
A shockingly macabre shade of what looks like blood cascades down the
pale face of Taylor Glacier. When scientists first discovered these
falls in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in 1911, they thought algae colored the
dark red water that spewed from a crack in the glacier. It turns out
the hue comes from high iron levels in the falls’ source, a pool buried
1,300 feet below the ice. In a sinister twist, the landscape is so arid
that when seals and penguins wander inland and get lost, they never
decompose; their remains are left strewn about.
The Cave of the Crystals, Naica, Mexico
It looks like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude come to life. A
thousand feet underground in a working lead and silver mine in
Chihuahua, Mexico, opaque crystals of gypsum—some as large as four feet
wide and 50 feet long—sprout at all angles from the volcanically heated
water below. Temperatures in the cave, which was discovered only in
2000, can reach 150 degrees with nearly 100 percent humidity, conditions
that only a superhuman could survive in for long. Any more than 10
minutes in a cave without proper gear can lead to heatstroke.
Giant’s Causeway, United Kingdom
One of Northern Ireland’s most popular tourist attractions, Giant’s
Causeway earned its name from the 40,000 basalt columns that interlock
to form what looks like a walkway fit for a colossus. The stones, mostly
hexagonal in shape, formed 60 million years ago when underground lava
flows cooled into formations as tall as 39 feet high and 18 inches in
diameter. It was comparatively recently—about 15,000 years ago—that the
soil around the seaside stones eroded and they became visible above
ground.
The Wave, Coyote Buttes, AZ and UT
Wind and rain have worked their magic, eroding lines that swoop and
swirl across the sandstone formation. The result, which resembles a
cresting wave, is one of the most photographed—if not easy to
reach—spots in the American West. A permit is required to make the
unmarked hike to the Wave, and only 20 are given out daily. It’s almost
easier to make the journey to southwest Australia to see the Wave’s down
under counterpart, Wave Rock.
White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
There are sugar-white dunes moving through the Chihuahuan Desert of
New Mexico at a rate of nearly 30 feet per year. As the mineral-rich
water of nearby Lake Lucero evaporates, it forms gypsum deposits that
are then shaped by the wind into these dunes. Since the early 1900s,
visitors have been here to hike; ranger tours and bus tours along the
16-mile Dunes Drive are also offered through the National Parks Service.
Silfra Rift, Þingvellir National Park, Iceland
The shifting of the tectonic plates that fit together like puzzle
pieces on the earth’s crust (a.k.a. continental drift) is more visible
in southwest Iceland’s Þingvellir National Park than anywhere else. In
the park’s ever-widening Almannagjá canyon, you can walk in the seam of
the Eurasian and North American plates as they slowly move apart—or you
can dive into the crack between continents in the Silfra Rift in Lake
Þingvellir. It takes nearly a century for glacier ice to melt and filter
through lava into the lake, but once the water gets there, it’s so
clear that visibility underwater is nearly 1,000 feet.
Ice Towers of Mount Erebus, Antarctica
On the frozen slopes of Mount Erebus, above the world’s most
southerly active volcano, superheated gas rises through steam vents to
form caverns in the ice. When the volcanic gas passes through the caves,
some of it freezes inside, forming gnarled chimney towers that can
reach heights of more than 60 feet. The result is a landscape of icy
smokestacks belching steam into the freezing Antarctic air like a
cluster of magical factories.
Devils Marbles, Australia
Known to the Aborigines as a sacred place called Karlu Karlu, the
Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve gives Ayers Rock some serious
competition as the Northern Territory’s most iconic site. Most photos
focus on just two of the rocks, but there are actually many more of
these prehistoric rust-colored granite boulders—some of which can be as
large as 20 feet in diameter—strewn over an area of 4,400 acres.
Tessellated Pavement at Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania
The coastline of the Tasman Peninsula is unlike any other in the
world thanks to a rare erosion effect named after a Roman mosaic
technique called tessellated pavement. There are two different patterns
produced by the erosion: some of the rock pieces are formed into rounded
bricks that resemble loaves of bread, while others develop depressions
that collect saltwater between their raised borders, reflecting the sky
like a window frame that stretches to the sea.
Sarisariñama Sinkholes, Venezuela
On the flat-topped mountain of Cerro Sarisariñama in southwest
Venezuela, gravity has punched four perfectly circular holes nearly
1,000 feet deep into a landscape of remote rainforest. Hundreds of miles
from the nearest road, the area is so far removed from civilization
that the sinkholes weren’t discovered until 1961, when they were spotted
by a pilot flying over the mountain.
Puerto Princesa Subterranean River, Philippines
The five-mile-long Puerto Princesa Subterranean River on the island
of Palawan is the world’s longest navigable underground river. It flows
to the South China Sea through a nearly 15-mile-long cave that’s lined
with stalactites and stalagmites and contains the largest cave chamber
in the world. The surrounding park is a UNESCO
World Heritage Site that’s equally impressive and is home to more than
800 plant species, 165 kinds of birds, 30 mammal species, 19 varieties
of reptiles, and nine different species of bats.
Chocolate Hills, Philippines
There are two popular legends that explain the formation of the
Chocolate Hills, the nearly 2,000 symmetrical mounds that rise as tall
as 400 feet above the surrounding farmland of Bohol Island. One claims
that they’re the mess left behind by two giants who had a boulder fight.
The other says that the hills are the tears of a giant mourning the
death of his lover. But many visitors may prefer the sweeter image of
the grass-covered limestone hills, which turn a rich shade of brown in
dry season, as resembling the massive Hershey’s Kisses that inspired the
landscape’s name.
Luray Caverns, Virginia
In a 400-million-year-old cave system in rural Virginia you’ll find
the world’s largest musical instrument. Visitors have been coming to the
Luray Caverns to see limestone columns, stalactites, and stalagmites
since the site’s discovery in 1878, and while the natural beauty of the
underground world is its own draw, the main attraction is the Great
Stalacpipe Organ, built in 1954. When the keys of the organ are pressed,
a rubber mallet taps the cluster of nearby stalactites, producing
varying tones that echo throughout the site’s sprawling network of
caves.
Waitomo Glowworm Caves, New Zealand
Quarter-inch-long bioluminescent glowworms that radiate a tiny blue light dangle from the ceiling of these caves
deep in the lush, subtropical hills of New Zealand’s North Island.
Visitors ride in an inflatable raft along the underground Waitomo River
with Spellbound Glowworm & Cave Tours. Slowly adjusting to the darkness, they admire what looks like a turquoise starscape.
Why It’s Cool: Glowworms, which dangle sticky,
filamentous “fishing lines” to catch insects, are scattered throughout
many other caves, but their densely concentrated numbers here make this
grotto unique in the world.
Socotra Archipelago, Yemen
Sitting alone at the junction of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean,
the Socotra Archipelago has enjoyed almost uninterrupted isolation since
it broke off from the super-continent of Gondwana (the land mass from
which the Americas, Africa, Australia, Arabia, and India emerged) 100
million years ago. Since then, Mother Nature has evolved in many weird
and wonderful ways. This Unesco World Heritage
Site is home to exotic flora (trees that ooze bloodred sap; some that
bear foul-smelling, poisonous cucumbers; and others shaped like
bottles), 180 exotic birds, and 700 plant and animal species found
nowhere else on earth.
