In this photo gallery, five unusual places are visited, each with its own surreal vibe.
The first place is the Mendehall Ice Cave which has subsequently collapsed. Few people ever get an opportunity to view a glacier close-up but never mind to clamber around a cave inside the glacier. These cavities are typically formed by a stream of water or volcanic vents. That is what made the Mendenhall Ice Cave special. Aside from that it also looked like the inside of the Fortress of Solitude.
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Cave of the Crystals
The name of this cave makes it abundantly clear what one is going to find inside of it: crystals. These huge ginormous selenite crystals are found in the eponymously entitled Cave of Crystals in Chihuahua, Mexico measuring over 10 feet in diameter and weighing up to 50 tons in weight. The largest one ever found to date was 39 feet long and 13 feet wide.
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Son Doong Cave
Located in Vietnam, near its border with Laos, Son Doong Cave is the biggest known cave in the world. Just how big is it? Son Doong stretches for about 30,000 feet. The biggest chamber is over 650 feet tall. To put that in perspective, we could put the Gateway Arch from St. Louis inside the cave and there would still be room on top. Even though the cave was found in 1991, it wasn’t until 2010 that people actually managed to reach its end. This is because of a giant 200-foot high calcite wall later named the Great Wall of Vietnam.
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Lake Hillier
Lake Hillier is a seemingly innocuous lake located on an island in the Recherche Archipelago in Australia. None of the defining characteristics to make it famous: It is big, but not incredibly so. It’s not very deep. It’s not a strange shape, nor does it have any rare, incredible creature living in it. It would be a perfectly average lake if not for one peculiar characteristic. It’s pink.
Pink is its natural color. However, nobody knows for sure why. Most theories point to various bacteria or micro-algae that live in the lake and create a dye that gives it its distinct coloration. Whatever it is, it appears to be harmless to humans.
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Socotra
Technically, Socotra is an archipelago that consists of four islands. However, one of the islands takes up 95% of the total mass so people usually refer to that island when talking about Socotra. More interesting, though, is the fact that the island has been described as “the most alien-looking place on Earth”.
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Mount Roraima
One could argue that the view from the top of any mountain is staggering. However, very few of them could ever match up to the feeling you can get standing on top of Venezuela’s Mount Roraima. It’s not really the height that gets you. The summit is only about 9,000 feet tall, which isn’t all that majestic. It’s the feeling of standing on top of one of the world’s oldest geological formations, dating around two billion years ago.
Radu is the founder of GeeKiez and a freelance writer who specializes in historical, scientific and offbeat topics.