Mount Roraima
Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana
Mount
Roraima is a pretty remarkable place. It is a tabletop mountain with sheer
400-metre high cliffs on all sides. There is only one ‘easy’ way up, on a
natural staircase-like ramp on the Venezuelan side – to get up any other way
takes and experienced rock climber. On the top of the mountain it rains almost
every day, washing away most of the nutrients for plants to grow and creating a
unique landscape on the bare sandstone surface. This also creates some of the
highest waterfalls in the world over the sides (Angel falls is located on a
similar tabletop mountain some 130 miles away). Though there are only a few
marshes on the mountain where vegetation can grow properly, these contain many
species unique to the mountain, including a species of carnivorous pitcher plant.
Meteor Crater
USA
Meteor
Crater is a meteorite impact crater located approximately 43 miles (69 km) east
of Flagstaff, near Winslow in the northern Arizona desert of the United States.
Because the US Department of the Interior Division of Names commonly recognizes
names of natural features derived from the nearest post office, the feature
acquired the name of “Meteor Crater” from the nearby post office named Meteor.
The crater was created about 50,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch when
the local climate on the Colorado Plateau was much cooler and damper. At the
time, the area was an open grassland dotted with woodlands inhabited by woolly
mammoths, giant ground sloths, and camels. It was probably not inhabited by
humans; the earliest confirmed record of human habitation in the Americas dates
from long after this impact. The object that excavated the crater was a
nickel-iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which impacted the
plain at a speed of several kilometers per second.
The Great Dune of Pyla
France
Since Europe
has no deserts, you’d think the title of “Europe’s largest sand dune” would go
to something that wasn’t particularly impressive. But you’d be wrong. The Great
Dune of Pyla is 3km long, 500m wide and 100m high, and for reasons I will
probably never understand, it seems to have formed in a forest. The dune is
very steep on the side facing the forest and is famous for being a paragliding
site. At the top it also provides spectacular views out to sea and over the
forest (since the dune is far higher than any of the trees surrounding it).
Socotra
Republic of Yemen
Socotra has been described as one of
the most alien-looking place on Earth, and it’s not hard to see why. It is very
isolated with a harsh, dry climate and as a result a third of its plant-life is
found nowhere else, including the famous Dragon’s Blood Tree, a very-unnatural
looking umbrella-shaped tree which produces red sap. There are also a large
number of birds, spiders and other animals native to the island, and coral
reefs around it which similarly have a large number of endemic (i.e. only found
there) species. Socotra is considered the most biodiverse place in the Arabian
sea, and is a World Heritage Site.
Don Juan Pond
Antarctica
With a
salinity of over 40%, Don Juan Pond is the saltiest body of water in the world.
It is named after the two pilots who first investigated the pond in 1961, Lt
Don Roe and Lt John Hickey. It is a small lake, only 100m by 300m, and on
average 0.1m deep, but it is so salty that even in the Antarctic, where the
temperature at the pond regularly drops to as low as -30 degrees Celsius, it
never freezes. It is 18 times saltier than sea water, compared to the Dead Sea
which is only 8 times saltier than sea water.
Guaíra Falls
Brazil-Paraguay border
