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Our planet is packed with places that look as though someone made them up, when they are all as real as it gets. These surreal places are only strange for the people that don’t live near them, since part of their beauty is how striking they are. And when you have the whole world to choose from, you’re sure to find a place that will blow you away.
The best part of today’s ensemble is that every one of these sights exists in a different country, giving us different reasons to appreciate how wildly diverse our home can be. Shaped by volcanoes, water, or who knows what else, these places are the very definition of unique.
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Bolivia, The World’s Largest Salt Flat
Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat, covering roughly 10,000 square kilometers high in the Andes. During the rainy season, a thin layer of water can transform its perfectly flat surface into a giant natural mirror.
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Brazil, A Desert Filled With Lagoons
Lençóis Maranhenses looks like a desert, but its vast white dunes are dotted with temporary freshwater lagoons. Seasonal rains fill the hollows between shifting dunes, creating a landscape where brilliant blue pools appear amid seemingly endless sand.
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Turkmenistan, The Door to Hell
Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Crater, nicknamed the Door to Hell, is a huge gas-filled depression in the Karakum Desert. It began burning after the ground collapsed during Soviet drilling operations, creating an astonishing fire-lit landscape that has burned for decades.
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Yemen, An Island Full of Alien-Looking Trees
Socotra, part of Yemen, has been isolated long enough for extraordinary species to evolve there. Its famous dragon’s blood trees have umbrella-shaped crowns and produce a vivid red resin, making the island’s landscapes look almost completely unlike elsewhere.
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Namibia, Where the Desert Drinks Fog
Namibia’s Namib Sand Sea is the world’s only coastal desert with extensive dune fields shaped by fog. The enormous orange dunes, gravel plains, rocky formations, and sparse vegetation create a landscape that looks starkly alien, especially around Deadvlei.
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Philippines, The Chocolate Hills
The Philippines’ Chocolate Hills are a huge collection of unusually uniform, cone-shaped mounds on Bohol. There are roughly 1,776 of them, and their grass-covered surfaces turn brown during the dry season, giving the geological formation its memorable name.
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Turkey, A Mountain Made of Cotton
Turkey’s Pamukkale is covered with dazzling white travertine terraces formed by mineral-rich hot spring water. Cascading pools and petrified waterfalls climb the hillside, while the nearby ancient ruins of Hierapolis add another layer to this extraordinary landscape.
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China, Mountains Painted by Nature
China’s Danxia landscapes feature spectacular red cliffs, pillars, towers, ravines, valleys, and waterfalls carved from reddish sandstone and conglomerate. The striking contrast between crimson rock, green vegetation, and blue water makes these formations particularly photogenic.
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Iceland, Where Fire Meets Ice
Iceland’s Vatnajökull region is a spectacular meeting point of fire and ice, containing a huge ice cap alongside active volcanoes, lava fields, and glacial rivers. Eruptions beneath the ice can trigger sudden floods called jökulhlaups.
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New Zealand, A Cave Full of Living Stars
New Zealand’s Waitomo caves contain thousands of tiny glowworms that illuminate the darkness like a starry sky. The limestone cave network was carved by underground streams over thousands of years, creating a genuinely surreal setting beneath the countryside.
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Ethiopia, Earth’s Otherworldly Laboratory
Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression is an extreme volcanic landscape filled with salt flats, acidic hot springs, bubbling lava, and vividly colored mineral formations. Its combination of heat, toxic gases, and alien-looking geology has even made it useful as a Mars analog.
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Tanzania, The Pink Lake
Tanzania’s Lake Natron can appear strikingly red or pink because salt-loving microorganisms color its alkaline waters and crust. Despite the harsh conditions, the lake is a crucial breeding site for lesser flamingos, which benefit from its predator-resistant environment.
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Indonesia, Three Lakes That Change Color
Indonesia’s Mount Kelimutu contains three crater lakes whose colors can change over time. The lakes may appear blue, green, black, red, white, or brown, producing a surreal volcanic landscape whose appearance can differ dramatically from one visit to another.
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Jordan, A Desert That Looks Like Another Planet
Jordan’s Wadi Rum is a vast desert of towering sandstone mountains, narrow gorges, natural arches, cliffs, and cavernous formations. The landscape’s enormous scale and shifting colors make it look less like an ordinary desert and more like another planet.
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Madagascar, A Forest Made of Stone
Madagascar’s Tsingy de Bemaraha is a forest of razor-sharp limestone pinnacles, some rising around 100 meters. Erosion carved the stone into a labyrinth of narrow formations and deep gorges, creating one of the world’s most unusual natural landscapes.
The post 15 Awesome Photos Highlighting Our Cool and Unique World appeared first on Den of Geek.
