• From abandoned train tunnels of love, to caves full of killer luminescent worms,
we count 15 of the wildest and strangely gorgeous places you'll find in our little blue world
15 - Lake Natron • This one is located in Tanzania - a lake
giving off such a vivid hue due to its high evaporation rates
• In the dry season, the water evaporates more than usual and salinity levels increase
to the maximum possible point, during which micro-organisms that thrive on salt begin
to appear • Most of them produce a red pigment, cover
the lake's surface and gives off the impression of a glass-covered surface of Mars
14 - Fly Geyser • A lot of folks who live in Nevada don't
know about this one, and for good reason since it's located on a private Fly ranch, protected
by high fences and spiky locked gates • This one was partly created by accident,
but still in a natural way - well drilling had ceased there for a long time and warm
geothermal water happened to find a weak spot, leading to spillage on the surface
• Dissolved minerals began sculpting the landscape into this gorgeous site, with the
variety of minerals offering a wide variety of pigments
13 - Tunnel of Love • This one is located in Ukraine, an abandoned
train rail section, but today trees and fronds grow freely over the tracks
• Curiously enough though trains continued to run through the forest of leaves to reach
the Kleven village, and the train forged a tunnel of leaves according to its size
• Now, people tend to roam the tracks arm-in-arm with their partner - a true tunnel of love
12 - Giant's Causeway • Northern Ireland, nestled next to the
Atlantic Ocean we find a bizarre array of over 40,000 geometric columns with six sides
in a honeycomb-like pattern • Course, these weren't always around - it
took 60 million years for cooled magma erosion for these to appear, and you could only start
to see them around 15,000 years ago • Today, they're a hotspot for tourist activity
11 - Socotra • Located in Yemen, it's considered one
of the most unique archipelagos in the Indian Ocean purely for the diversity of flora and
fauna • Here you can see an example of the alien-type
plants that grow, mostly as a result of the island's isolation from the rest of the land
along with the intense, constant heat and drought
• This here is known as the dragon's blood tree, like a giant mushroom made of leaves
and bark - Aboriginals gave it the name of dragon's blood due to its red sap
10 - Juizhaigou Valley • This is part of a series of water basins
in China, and this particular one is the smallest • Though it's shallow, it also has a breathtaking
underwater landscape that's clear and brightly coloured, leading many to travel here just
to gaze at it • The legends go Goddess Semo used to wash
her hair in this lake 9 - Mount Roraima
• This is like a photo from a super-realistic version of Minecraft, but it's very much not
photoshopped • You'll find it in Venezuela and it's one
of the oldest formations on Earth, acting as a natural border between Venezuela, Brazil
and Guyana in South America • It actually served as the inspiration
for the Pixar film "Up", and this formation is SO large that water builds up to tremendous
amounts, allowing the waterfalls to run continuously 8 - Fingal's Cave
• Located in Scotland, a cave named after the 18th century hero from an epic poem, it's
similar in composition to the Giant Causeway with hexagonal basalt columns created by solidified
lava • This particular cave is in a place called
Staffa, an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland
• It contains high arched roofs like what you'd find in the vaults of Gringotts from
Harry Potter, but with this cave they'll let you explore if you so wish
7 - Skaftafell Ice Cave • This one appeared in Iceland as a result
of glacial mill, where rain and melted water form streams in the cave's ice crevices, which
in turn forms long glacial walls like something you'd find in an aquarium
• This alone isn't enough to form the caves though, no, it takes heavy, cold wind to blow
a small hole through the centre which widens with time to create an incredibly hollow,
fragile cave of watery glass - one that can collapse at any moment
6 - Angkor • A 12th century temple in Cambodia, one
of many, and since they've been abandoned for so long trees have up and grown all over
the place • This one here is like from a scene of
Indiana Jones, and they're more common than you'd think
5 - Black Forest • I swear this is the exact forest as seen
in Final Fantasy 7 - a dark, sinister canopy of evergreens splayed out in a colourful forest
• This is part of a vast expanse of hills, rivers and valleys stretching from the spa
town of Baden-Baden towards the Swiss border, as well as from Lake Constance to Rhine
4 - Antelope Canyon • You should already know about this one
if you live in the United States, but for everyone else, it's a common tourist attraction
featuring smooth, orange-red walls from a canyon hit by flash flooding - this, in turn,
eroded the sandstone and created these beautiful passageways
• Even today, the rains and floods continue slowly forging more passages
• Nobody is actually sure when this was discovered, but the local Navajos claim this
had been part of their cultural heritage for a long time
3 - Waitomo Caves • If you're familiar with David Attenborough,
you might've heard about the glowing worms atop these caves in New Zealand
• They leave behind a glistening residue that sticks small insects to the forest of
worm goop, then, slowly but surely, the worms make their way across the walls to ingest
them • It's a cave of glistening death, but a
*nice* one 2 - Puerto Vallarta
• This one can be found on the beaches of the Marieta Islands, Mexico, ones formed as
a result of volcanic activity and, in some cases, bomb testing before it was banned in
the last century • It features a unique marine ecosystem
with sea turtles, humpback whales and dolphins • Most tourists go snorkeling and scuba
diving when they show up - completely alone under a dome of land
1 - Richat Structure • Also known as the Eye of the Sahara - a
circular feature in the Sahara desert of west-central Mauritania
• It's been the subject of speculation about whether it's a meteor impact or otherwise
- but the scientific conclusion is that sedimentary rock received various levels of erosion of
resistant layers of quartzite, explaining its rings and colour
• Very fascination nonetheless