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 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, California
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 are 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 are 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 centre of the earth. The stones are also found on Bowling Ball Beach in Mendocino, California, as well as elsewhere in the US and Canada and Russia.
Cano Cristales River, Colombia
Folks make the journey into central Colombia’s Serranea de la Macarena national park to see why Cano Cristales has inspired nicknames like the River of Five Colours, 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 colours.
The Eye of the Sahara, 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, or Richat Structure, 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.
