The Most Unusual Places on Earth

In today’s selec­tion, we will talk about the most unusu­al cor­ners of our plan­et. They are unusu­al in their land­scapes, when you see these pho­tographs, you might think that these places are on some oth­er plan­ets, in oth­er galax­ies, but not on Earth. The most amaz­ing thing is that the ini­tial impres­sion is wrong — our plan­et is able to sur­prise us, con­stant­ly pre­sent­ing new sur­pris­es and mys­ter­ies.

So, let’s move on to the sto­ry of the most unusu­al cor­ners of our plan­et. We have already told you about places sur­round­ed by many mys­ter­ies (The most mys­te­ri­ous places on the plan­et). In the same selec­tion, we will focus on unusu­al land­scapes that arouse admi­ra­tion for their appear­ance alone — these are real won­ders of nature. We always try to pro­vide you with max­i­mum infor­ma­tion about the top­ic of inter­est, so in the rat­ing we will refer to arti­cles already writ­ten ear­li­er — there you can learn more about all the places on our list.

Let’s start with the most unearth­ly part of our plan­et — the Dry Val­leys in Antarc­ti­ca. This desert is unique in that it is the dri­est place on earth. There has been no pre­cip­i­ta­tion here for sev­er­al mil­lion years. This place, in terms of its cli­mate, is clos­est to Mars, there­fore it is of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to NASA. Mars rovers are being test­ed here, large-scale research is being con­duct­ed in all direc­tions. It is the only part of Antarc­ti­ca not cov­ered in ice. In the val­leys there is a frozen lake with extreme­ly salty water, mys­te­ri­ous bac­te­ria and organ­isms were dis­cov­ered under the ice — this dis­cov­ery served as con­fir­ma­tion of the the­o­ry that life exists on Mars. Read more about the Dry Val­leys in the arti­cle The dri­est place on earth

In sec­ond place is the island of Soco­tra — the land­scapes of this island are unique, and look more like alien ones. The island is geo­graph­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed from Africa for 6 mil­lion years, replete with many extreme­ly rare species of flo­ra and fau­na — a third of them are endem­ic and are found only here. Despite the hot and dry cli­mate, many amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful plants grow here, many of which are about 20 mil­lion years old. More detailed infor­ma­tion about this place in the arti­cle — Soco­tra Island

Next on the list of “Most Unusu­al Places on Earth” is the Rio Tin­to Quar­ry in Andalu­sia, Spain. The huge careers of Rio Tin­to cre­ate a sur­re­al, moon-like land­scape. The quar­ries are named after the riv­er of the same name that flows here and leach­es min­er­als from huge craters. Min­ing here has been car­ried out for many cen­turies, so the riv­er turned bright red-orange, its acid­i­ty and sat­u­ra­tion with met­als just rolls over. At the moment, min­ing in this region has been stopped, and Rio Tin­to attracts crowds of tourists and pho­tog­ra­phers to Andalu­sia

Let’s move on, we still have some­thing to sur­prise you 🙂 I bet you have nev­er heard of Spot­ted Lake, let alone seen such stun­ning land­scapes. The lake is locat­ed in British Colum­bia, Cana­da. Depend­ing on weath­er con­di­tions and the sea­son, the lake crys­tal­lizes and turns into a cer­tain col­or. A lot of “spots” are formed on the lake — cir­cles of min­er­als. This is the world’s largest con­cen­tra­tion of mag­ne­sium sul­fate (Epsom salt), cal­ci­um and sodi­um, as well as sil­ver and tita­ni­um. This place is sacred to the native Indi­ans of Cana­da, and is famous for its heal­ing prop­er­ties — for this he was giv­en the name Kliluk. Read more in the top­ic “Spot­ted Lake Kliluk”

Anoth­er unusu­al land­scape is the world’s largest salt lake, Uyu­ni Salt Flats. This is a beau­ti­ful area with a huge salty desert, active vol­ca­noes, large islands of cac­ti and gey­sers. On the sur­face of the lake you can ride a jeep — admire the unusu­al, some­times unearth­ly beau­ty of this place. The Uyu­ni salt marsh is clear­ly vis­i­ble from space, and is one of the points for cal­i­brat­ing satel­lites

In Brazil, there is anoth­er unusu­al place — Vale da Lua, which means Val­ley of the Moon. It is a water-washed rock for­ma­tion with nat­ur­al swim­ming pools. Vale da Lua is locat­ed in the Brazil­ian for­est Cha­pa­da and is one of the old­est rock for­ma­tions on the plan­et, con­sist­ing of quartz and crys­tals.

There are also unusu­al places in Japan. This is Bloody Pond, one of the famous springs of Bep­pu. There are nine unusu­al geyser springs in this city, but the most famous among them is the Blood Pool with bright red hot water. This col­or is due to the high con­tent of iron in the water. This pond is also the most pho­to­genic of all the springs.

At num­ber eight on our list, the Shilin Stone For­est in Chi­na is a stun­ning exam­ple of karst topog­ra­phy. The rocks are made of lime­stone and shaped by water that has destroyed every­thing but these tree-like pil­lars. Since the Ming Dynasty, Shilin Stone For­est has been known as the “First Won­der of the World”

Anoth­er mir­a­cle of nature is the Richat Struc­ture in Mau­ri­ta­nia. It is also called the Eye of the Sahara. Richat is about 30 miles in diam­e­ter and is vis­i­ble from space. The for­ma­tion was orig­i­nal­ly thought to be the result of a mete­orite impact, but mod­ern geol­o­gists believe that the Richat struc­ture is the result of ero­sion. The rea­son for its round shape is still a mys­tery that sci­en­tists around the world are strug­gling with.

The famous gates to Hell — Dar­vaz in Turk­menistan, also made it to our list. This place fright­ens with its pow­er, thou­sands of tons of lava and heat ema­nat­ing from the bow­els of the Earth. There is a burn­ing crater in the mid­dle of the Karakum desert, its diam­e­ter is 60 meters and the depth is 20 meters. At its core, Dar­vaz is a gas well, and the his­to­ry of its dis­cov­ery is quite inter­est­ing. Researchers drilled a well here to extract gas, but as a result, this huge abyss opened up, the gas had to be set on fire so that no one was poi­soned. Read more about the inter­est­ing his­to­ry of this unusu­al place in the arti­cle “Dar­vaz, the gates to Hell”

The Eis­reisen­welt ice caves close the list of the most unusu­al places on earth. These caves dif­fer from any oth­er caves in their icy unusu­al­ness. When you get here, you feel like you are in some oth­er fairy-tale world. There are many ice caves in the world, but the Eis­reisen­welt caves are the largest among them. Their total length is 40 kilo­me­ters, and only a small part is open to the pub­lic. But even this is enough for thou­sands of tourists every day to admire the grandeur and unusu­al­ness of this place.