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From the The Spotted Lake to TheGlow Worm Caves. 7 Amazing Places You Won’t Believe Exist
Kliluk, The Spotted Lake
Spotted Lake is a saline endorheic alkali lake located northwest of Osoyoos in British Columbia and is very highly concentrated with numerous different minerals.
In the summer, most of the water in the lake evaporates leaving behind all the minerals. Large “spots” on the lake appear and depending on the mineral composition at the time, the spots will be different colors. The spots are made mainly of magnesium sulfate, which crystallizes in the summer. Since in the summer, only the minerals in the lake remain, they harden to form natural “walkways” around and between the spots.
Spotted Lake contains some of the highest quantities in the world of magnesium sulfate, calcium and sodium sulphates.link
Lencois Maranhenses a desert with lagoons
Located in the State of Maranhão, on the north shore of Brazil, the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park is an area of about 300 square kilometers (155,000 ha) of blinding white dunes and deep blue lagoons, forming one of the most beautiful and unique places in the world. The dunes invade the continent over 50km (31 miles) from the cost, creating a landscape that reminds a white bed sheet, when seen from above.
Lençóis Maranhenses looks like an archetypal desert. In fact it isn’t actually a desert. Lying just outside the Amazon basin, the region is subject to a regular rain season during the beginning of the year. The rains cause a peculiar phenomenon: fresh water collects in the valleys between sand dunes, spotting the desert with blue and green lagoons that reach their fullest between July and September.
The area is also surprisingly home to a variety of fish which, despite the almost complete disappearance of the lagoons during the dry season, have their eggs brought from the sea by birds. link
Glow Worm Caves
The Waitomo Glowworm Cave is a cave filled with thousands of glowing glow-worms on the North Island of New Zealand. These glowworms are found exclusively in New Zealand and around the size of an average mosquito. link
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNVaRPZTGwI[/youtube]
The Giant’s Causeway
The Giant’s Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is located in County Antrim, on the northeast coast of Northern Ireland.
Legend has it that the Irish warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. One version of the legend tells that Fionn fell asleep before he got to Scotland. When he did not arrive, the much larger Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over him so he could pretend that he was actually their baby son. In a variation, Fionn fled after seeing Benandonner’s great bulk, and asked his wife to disguise him as the baby. In both versions, when Benandonner saw the size of the ‘infant’, he assumed the alleged father, Fionn, must be gigantic indeed. Therefore, Benandonner fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway in case he was followed by Fionn. link
Glacier Grey
The Southern Patagonian Icefield of Chile and Argentina hosts several spectacular glaciers—including Grey Glacier located in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. This glacier, which in 1996 had a measured total area of 270 square kilometers and a length of 28 kilometers (104 square miles in area, 17 miles long), begins in the Patagonian Andes Mountains to the west and terminates in three distinct lobes into Grey Lake.link
Moon Valley
Valle de la Luna (moon valley in English) is situated about 10 kilometers from downtown La Paz, Bolivia. The erosion has achieved after the years to form a group of astonishing stony formations that give the visitor the sensation of having discovered an unknown world. A true one and almost “real” lunar landscape. link
Kyoto Bamboo Forest
Arashiyama is a wonderful place to take photos and is located just west of Kyoto and next to Sagano.rashiyama is perhaps most famous for it’s bamboo groves.
In Japan, a bamboo forest sometimes surrounds a Shinto shrine as part of a sacred barrier against evil. Many Buddhist temples also have bamboo groves.
Several Asian cultures, including that of the Andaman Islands, believe that humanity emerged from a bamboo stem. In the Philippine creation myth, legend tells that the first man and the first woman each emerged from split bamboo stems on an island created after the battle of the elemental forces (Sky and Ocean). In Malaysian legends a similar story includes a man who dreams of a beautiful woman while sleeping under a bamboo plant; he wakes up and breaks the bamboo stem, discovering the woman inside. The Japanese folktale “Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” (Taketori Monogatari) tells of a princess from the Moon emerging from a shining bamboo section. Hawaiian bamboo (‘ohe) is a kinolau or body form of the Polynesian creator god Kāne.
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