Amazing Wonders of Nature. Part 1

These dra­mat­ic won­ders of nature are proof that Moth­er Nature can sur­prise even the most advanced trav­el­ers. Take, for exam­ple, the spot­ty Lake Kliluk, which, with its col­or­ing, is more like a rug for play­ing Twister. In this selec­tion, you will not find stereo­typ­i­cal land­scapes with blue lakes, green val­leys and white sandy beach­es. For mil­lions of years, our plan­et has been work­ing tire­less­ly. With the help of the pow­er of water, wind and sun, a num­ber of unique attrac­tions have appeared, the exis­tence of which is some­times impos­si­ble to believe. How­ev­er, these places exist in real­i­ty and you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it them. Long before sci­en­tists could explain the ori­gin of such places, peo­ple came up with their own expla­na­tions. As a result, many leg­ends and tales appeared, which are passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Today, many mir­a­cles are no longer cov­ered with a veil of secre­cy, but this does not make them less majes­tic and unusu­al.

Marble Caves of Chile

The mar­ble caves in Chile were cre­at­ed as a result of six thou­sand years of ero­sion, which was the main force in cre­at­ing unique mar­ble-effect pat­terns. All this is enhanced by the reflec­tion of the bluish-green water of Lake Car­rera. The incred­i­ble Mar­ble Caves are locat­ed on the bor­der of Argenti­na and Chile. Trav­el­ers still have a unique chance to swim inside the caves in a kayak. The gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly dis­cussing plans to build a dam that could flood the entire area and expose the caves to deep water.

Lake Retba, Senegal

It looks like some­one poured a giant buck­et of paint into the waters of Lake Ret­ba, Sene­gal, turn­ing them bright pink. In fact, the water of the lake has acquired this col­or due to the active repro­duc­tion of an alga called Dunaliel­la sali­na, which releas­es a spe­cif­ic pig­ment. The salt con­tent of Ret­ba’s water is extreme­ly high, reach­ing up to 40 per­cent in some places, which fur­ther pro­motes the growth of algae. Even if you don’t know how to swim, you can safe­ly jump into the waters of the lake, since it’s impos­si­ble to drown here for the rea­son men­tioned above. A white lay­er of dried salt cov­ers the shores of this unusu­al place. A full cycle of salt col­lec­tion is orga­nized here, with sub­se­quent sale to numer­ous tourists. You can read about oth­er amaz­ing pink lakes in the world in a sep­a­rate selec­tion.

Ausbirgi Canyon, Iceland

Leg­end has it that Asbir­gi Canyon in north­ern Ice­land was cre­at­ed when the horse of the god Nors struck the ground with its horse­shoe. As a result of this blow, a gorge appeared 100 meters deep, three kilo­me­ters long and almost a kilo­me­ter wide. Accord­ing to a more mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion, the canyon was formed after two peri­ods of melt­ing glac­i­ers about 10,000 years ago. But stand­ing on top of a cliff and look­ing at the extra­or­di­nary beau­ty of the horse­shoe-shaped canyon, one believes more in a sto­ry with God than in an offi­cial sci­en­tif­ic inter­pre­ta­tion. This is one of the most out­stand­ing sights in Ice­land, which is def­i­nite­ly worth a vis­it.

Uyuni Salt Flat, Bolivia

When the pre­his­toric lake dried up about 30,000 years ago, there were only end­less white expans­es of salt land­scape cov­er­ing the entire hori­zon. The Uyu­ni Salt Flats is the largest salt field in the world, cov­er­ing an area of ​​6,000 square kilo­me­ters. More than 25,000 tons of salt are mined here annu­al­ly, which pro­vides work for local com­mu­ni­ties. The Salar de Uyu­ni is home to thou­sands of pink flamin­gos and attracts tourists with the Pala­cio de Sal. The 16-room hotel is locat­ed in the mid­dle of a salt desert and is made entire­ly of salt blocks.

Pamukkale in Turkey

Peo­ple have been vis­it­ing Pamukkale for its heal­ing pools for thou­sands of years. Water flow­ing from 17 under­ground sources fills nat­ur­al pools. Due to the high con­tent of cal­ci­um, soft rocks are formed at the source, which even­tu­al­ly hard­en and turn into a kind of dome called Pamukkale. The locals call these foun­tains the poet­ic name “Cot­ton Cas­tle”. The largest springs of pamukkale are vis­i­ble even from a dis­tance of 10 kilo­me­ters.

moving stones

Mov­ing stones in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Death Val­ley are one of the most mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­e­na of nature, which has many expla­na­tions. No one has yet seen one of the mov­ing rocks in Death Val­ley direct­ly in motion, but evi­dence of their trav­els is vis­i­ble from long marks on the ground that stretch for hun­dreds of meters. Sci­en­tists are not sure exact­ly how these hun­dreds of kilo­grams of stones make their way along the dried-up bot­tom of the lake. The pre­vail­ing the­o­ry is that the rocks move on wet ground under the influ­ence of strong winds. The deep marks they leave behind indi­cate a path of 300 meters from their start­ing point.

White Desert

Con­vex White Rocks of strange shape and size rise above the desert about 50 kilo­me­ters north of the city of Farafra in West­ern Egypt. A group of for­ma­tions in the White Desert resem­bles a herd of melt­ed snow­men, or the work of some avant-garde sculp­tor. But in fact, they were formed due to mil­len­nia of wind expo­sure. When the ancient sea in this area dried up and left dried land behind, the rem­nants of the rock began to crum­ble. Soft­er lay­ers col­lapsed faster, and stronger ones formed rocks of such an unusu­al shape. This is the mys­tery of the white desert of Egypt.

Moeraki boulders

Round boul­ders line the Moer­a­ki beach in New Zealand, reach­ing sev­er­al meters in diam­e­ter. Their bizarre shapes resem­ble huge mar­ble dinosaur eggs, or sub­merged his­tor­i­cal tur­tles, ready to get up and get rid of the sand at any moment. The imag­i­na­tion gives rise to many oth­er mys­ti­cal expla­na­tions, but in fact, these mass­es of com­pact­ed sed­i­ment formed under­ground more than 50 mil­lion years ago. Grad­u­al­ly, the sand sur­round­ing them sank until the Moer­a­ki Boul­ders appeared on the sur­face. Sim­i­lar boul­ders can be found on beach­es in oth­er parts of the world, includ­ing the US, Cana­da, and Rus­sia. There is no mys­ti­cism here and every­thing has long been described in biol­o­gy text­books.

Canyo Cristales

Peo­ple trav­el to the Sier­ra de la Macare­na Nation­al Park in Cen­tral Colom­bia to see the unusu­al Caño Cristales Riv­er. It is also called the riv­er of 5 col­ors, liq­uid rain­bow and even the most beau­ti­ful riv­er in the world. It is impor­tant to choose the right sea­son here, as the water reach­es its most beau­ti­ful col­or between July and Decem­ber. At this time, it is more like a kalei­do­scope of pink, green, and blue. To this splen­dor is added a yel­low tint thanks to the algae Macare­nia Clav­ig­era, which lives on the riv­er bot­tom and blooms under the influ­ence of sun­light.

Eye of the Sahara

This huge oval-shaped depres­sion is more than 40 kilo­me­ters wide and resem­bles a darts tar­get on the flat sur­face of the desert in Mau­ri­ta­nia. The Richat, or Eye of the Sahara, struc­ture is vis­i­ble even from space and has served as a guide for astro­nauts since the ear­li­est flights. The eye is not the result of an alien game of darts. The depres­sion was formed under the influ­ence of winds, which destroyed var­i­ous lay­ers of sed­i­men­ta­ry rocks at dif­fer­ent depths.

spotted lake

Spot­ted Kliluk Lake is locat­ed in British Colum­bia, Cana­da. The sur­face of this lake resem­bles a mat for the pop­u­lar game of Twister. This won­der of nature is locat­ed a few kilo­me­ters from the bor­der of the state of Wash­ing­ton in the Cana­di­an city of Osoy­oos. Each sum­mer, much of the water in this min­er­al-rich lake evap­o­rates, leav­ing behind large pools of high con­cen­tra­tions of salts, tita­ni­um, cal­ci­um, sul­fates and oth­er min­er­als. Their com­bi­na­tion forms a whole series of green, yel­low and brown cir­cles of dif­fer­ent sizes. Spot­ted Lake is sacred to the Cana­di­an Indi­ans of the Okana­gan Val­ley and the land is pri­vate­ly owned by the Indi­an com­mu­ni­ty. Tourists are for­bid­den to come close to the lake, so as not to dis­turb the frag­ile ecosys­tem, but you can admire it from the near­by road, which offers a great view.

Shilin stone forest

This is a very unusu­al for­est. Most of the trees in Chi­na’s remote Yunan province are made of stone. Cov­er­ing approx­i­mate­ly 300 square kilo­me­ters, the area was under water 270 mil­lion years ago. The seabed was cov­ered with lime­stone sed­i­ment. Grad­u­al­ly the water reced­ed and the bot­tom was on the sur­face. Rain and wind have erod­ed the soft rock over the mil­len­nia, but the stronger lime­stone lay­ers have sur­vived and formed the point­ed lime­stone spiers. Today they rise high, sur­round­ed by leafy trees. Shilin Stone For­est is quite a pop­u­lar attrac­tion in Chi­na.

bloody waterfall

This water­fall in Antarc­ti­ca has a very eerie hue, rem­i­nis­cent of cas­cades of blood flow­ing over the pale Tay­lor Glac­i­er. Sci­en­tists first dis­cov­ered this water­fall in the McMur­do Dry Val­leys in 1911. They thought that sea­weed formed the dark red col­or of the water, but in fact the hue is due to the high iron con­tent in the source, which is locat­ed under the glac­i­er. Even more omi­nous are the corpses of pen­guins and seals, which do not decom­pose due to the extreme arid­i­ty of the region. You can read more about the secret of Blood Falls in a sep­a­rate arti­cle.

Cave of Crystals

In 1910, in the Mex­i­can Nike mine, the Penoles Min­ing Com­pa­ny dis­cov­ered what is today known as the Cave of Swords. The cave was an 80-meter hall with giant selen­ites up to 2 meters in length. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the entire sec­tion of the cave was open to explo­ration and even­tu­al­ly tourism, which attract­ed many of the crys­tals to be destroyed. 90 years lat­er, two min­ers work­ing on a tun­nel at a depth of 300m dis­cov­ered anoth­er much larg­er cave. The crys­tals here reached 12 m in length, and each of them weighed approx­i­mate­ly 55 tons. These were the largest crys­tals ever seen in the caves. It was this cave that was nick­named the Giant Nike Crys­tal Cave.

Pavement of the Giants

One of North­ern Ire­land’s most pop­u­lar attrac­tions, the Cause­way of the Giants has earned its name from the 40,000 basalt columns that form what looks like a huge giant’s bridge. The pre­dom­i­nant­ly hexag­o­nal rocks formed 60 mil­lion years ago when under­ground lava flows were cooled by ocean waters. Some of the stones reach 10 meters in height. The pave­ment of the giants in its present form took shape rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly — approx­i­mate­ly 15,000 years ago, when the soil around the sea­side stones col­lapsed under the influ­ence of ero­sion.