40 Must-Visit Destinations Where Nature Has Created Mind-blowing Landscapes

Replete with giant blocks of selenite, the Cave of the Crystals in Mexico resembles the set of a sci-fi movie. In fact, these enormous structures formed over 10,000 years inside a U-shaped cavern, which is around 1,000 feet deep. The air inside is also highly acidic, deeply humid, and, at 136 °F, extremely hot.

Vinicunca Mountain resembles a piece of enormous, multicolored candy. Also known as Rainbow Mountain, the peak is more than 17,000 feet high and lies within a remote area of Cusco in the Andes of Peru. In fact, it can take several days of hiking to get there.

Standing in the Uyuni Salt Flats is like standing in an interminable void. Indeed, there seems to be no end to the bright white, relentlessly flat landscape. Sitting around 12,000 feet above sea level on the plateau of the Bolivian Altiplano, Uyuni covers an area of just over 4,000 square miles.

Located in America’s Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Prismatic Spring is so-called due to the dazzling array of colors encircling its banks, said to resemble the effect of a prism.

The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is a kaleidoscopic wonderland of multicolored corals and shimmering marine life. Bigger than the Great Wall of China, the reef stretches for 1,430 miles – making it the largest of its kind on Earth. It is also the only organism on the planet that can be seen from outer space.

Shrouded in mist, the towering stone pillars of the National Forest Park in Zhangjiajie, China, have a dream-like quality. It’s almost as if they belong in a fairy tale. The otherworldly formations resemble limestone pillars but are, in fact, composed of quartz and sandstone.

The fiord of Milford Sound is surely one of New Zealand’s best scenic treasures. Located on the South Island inside Fiordland National Park – which itself falls within the wider World Heritage site of Te Wahipounamu – Milford Sound is framed by a landscape of pristine rainforests, waterfalls, and cliffs.

Made up of interlocking hexagonal stone columns, the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland is the subject of an ancient myth. Once upon a time, so the story goes, an Irish giant called Finn MacCool constructed the causeway so that he and another giant in Scotland could traverse the sea, meet up and have a fight.

Mount Kelimutu is an intensely mystical place. Located between the Nusa Tenggara islands and Bali in Indonesia, the mountain houses three unique lakes. Why are they unique? Because their waters appear to change color. Indeed, sometimes they appear to be blue, other times red, white, brown, black, or green.

The pristine waters of Kuang Si waterfall cascade down three limestone tiers, feeding into a network of tranquil, turquoise pools. Located in Northern Laos, the waterfall is cloaked in rainforest, so not only is taking a dip here deeply refreshing, but it’s also as close to the beating heart of tropical nature as you can get.

Son Doong Cave is the largest cave in the world by cross-section. Located in Central Vietnam, close to the border with Laos, it was discovered in 1990 by a local man called Ho Khanh, who then told two British caver explorers about it 19 years later. The cave runs for more than five miles and even contains a river and its own ecosystem.

The mysterious Blue Hole sitting off the Belize coast in Central America has the appearance of a giant eye. Lying within the Belize Barrier Reef, it is in fact a 1,000-foot-wide sinkhole. The hole is filled with eerie formations such as stalactites and stalagmites.

Known as “the river that ran away from paradise,” Caño Cristales dazzles with psychedelic colors. The multi-hued spectacle is only visible during the autumn, though. The vivid colors are caused by vegetation on the river bed, which blooms bright red when the water level is low enough to permit sunlight to reach it.

Subject to great extremes of heat and aridity, Death Valley is a sweltering and inhospitable no man’s land between the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin. Straddling the border between Nevada and California, it’s the lowest, driest, and hottest National Park in America.

At nearly 11,000 feet, Colca Canyon in Peru is the world’s second-deepest canyon. Believe it or not, this massive gap in the Earth – running for more than 60 miles – is almost double the depth of America’s Grand Canyon. The valley is also a quintessential Andean destination.

The 2,000 stone formations inside Arches National Park formed over an unimaginably long epoch of 100 million years. And over that period, rain, wind, ice, freezing temperatures, and extreme heat eroded the sandstone landscape in Utah to create a surreal exhibition of rock sculptures.

Ha Long Bay consists of approximately 2,000 jungle-cloaked islets scattered across the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam. Forged from limestone over millions of years, most of the clustered islets are, in fact, narrow, steep-walled towers.

Clustered inside Western Australia’s Purnululu National Park lies a distinctive set of natural structures. Known as the Bungle Bungles, they almost resemble a network of nests for giant termites. The dome-like formations, in fact, consist of numerous layers of sandstone, some of them darkened by a blue-green-colored bacteria.

According to an indigenous myth, Khao Ta Pu island was created when a Thai fisherman dropped half of an unwanted magical nail into the waters of Phang Nga Bay. The story goes that the nail then grew to form the island. Essentially a rock pillar rising 66 feet out of the sea, the landmass is also known as James Bond Island.

With sandstone formations that look like giant toadstools, the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness Study Area plays host to myriad dreamlike landscapes. Located in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico, the 6,500-acre protected area is composed of sandstone, mudstone, shale, and coal, which have been spectacularly eroded over millions of years.

The Atacama Desert is one of the driest – and eeriest – locations on Earth. Located on the Pacific coast of Chile, it covers a desolate area of approximately 600 square miles. One of its prime attractions is the unearthly Valley of the Moon.

Kilauea is one of five volcanoes on Hawai’i Island in Hawaii. In recent history, it has been the most active of the island’s volcanoes. It started erupting in 1983, in fact, and didn’t stop until September 2018. But one burst of activity, which began in May 2018, was more violent than usual.

Reaching heights of more than 350 feet, redwood trees are the tallest organisms on the planet. To flourish, they require the copious moisture of marine fog. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that their natural habitat is the northwest coast of California. Having said that, the trees did once fill more than 3,000 square miles of coastline from Oregon down to Big Sur.

The vertiginous Cliffs of Moher, composed of shale and sandstone, run for five miles along the west coast of Ireland. Climbing to heights of more than 700 feet, they are a natural rampart against the tempestuous Atlantic Ocean. And in this remote and wild location, Atlantic puffins, dolphins, minke whales, razorbills, and porpoises are among the local wildlife.

In 1836 a missionary from America discovered a very special cave while in the Nahr el-Kalb valley just outside of Beirut in Lebanon. Yet it was only after the missionary fired his gun into the darkness that he realized how large it was.

Revered by the ancient Maya, cenotes, also known as sinkholes, are a characteristic feature of the landscape of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. But it’s easy to see why Cenote Ik-Kil is thought to be such a spectacular example.

Uluru, once known as Ayer’s Rock, is a giant sandstone monolith in central Australia. Its mysterious beauty is only enhanced by the play of sunlight on its surface. Over the course of the day, the rock famously goes from pink to orange to red in color.

Nearly ten times saltier than the ocean, the Dead Sea, perhaps unsurprisingly, is highly inhospitable to plants and wildlife. People, however, have been visiting the Middle Eastern lake for health and recreation for centuries.

The riverine wonder of Plitvice Lakes in Croatia consists of more than 16 lakes. They are joined by cascades and form one upper and one lower system. And as if they weren’t incredible enough on their own, at their conclusion the lake system empties into the Sastavci waterfalls.

Red is considered a lucky color in traditional Chinese culture so that must mean that Panjin Red Beach is considered an exceptionally auspicious place. This scarlet beach is actually swathed in Sueda – a type of red succulent.

Paria Canyon is a symbol of the Old West, the epitome of rugged grandeur and a stark natural monument that evokes a sense of boundless freedom. The canyon itself is located in the wilderness that covers parts of Arizona and Utah and is punctuated with dramatic geological formations.

Straddling the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia, Victoria Falls represents the Zambezi River at its most awesome. Thundering over a 360-foot-high cliff, the falls are approximately one mile wide and are the second-largest waterfall in the world after Iguazu Falls in South America.

Pamukkale, or Cotton Castle, is a collection of 17 hot springs in the valley of the Turkish Büyük Menderes River. According to local legend, the formations were created by a giant drying out his cotton harvest. In reality, though, the pools were actually formed by water depositing limestone onto rock terraces over thousands of years.

Bryce Canyon in southern Utah is not, in fact, a canyon. Rather, the area is a vast plateau crowded with unusual rock formations known as “Hoodoos.” Resembling fiery spires and jagged pillars, the hoodoos formed over millions of years through water erosion.

Millennia of continuous wave erosion created the Marble Caves, an enchanting grotto filled with curving arches and swirling marbled patterns. The caves are, in fact, situated within a marble peninsula overlooking a glacial lake in the Patagonian Andes on the border between Argentina and Chile.

Surrounded by the arid flatlands of the Chihuahua desert, the Guadalupe Mountains on the border with New Mexico and Texas are home to some 120 caves and caverns. They include Carlsbad Cavern, a cave system with spectacular limestone formations.

The Richat Structure, which is also known as the Eye of the Sahara, is an enormous, 25-mile-wide rock dome. So large that it's visible from space, the formation is situated in Mauritania on the Adrar plateau in the Sahara Desert.

The Chocolate Hills in the Philippines look, as their name might suggest, just like a field of giant chocolates. Dotted around a 20-square-mile area, they include more than 1,260 conical mounds and domes.

Resembling a cresting wave, the rolling face of Wave Rock is more than 300 feet across and 50 feet tall. Believe it or not, the Wave forms the northern edge of Hyden Rock, a hill in Western Australia.

Mount Roraima is the highest in a string of towering South American table-top mountains. Its sheer cliffs climb to 1,300 feet, while its starkly vegetated summit covers an area of 12 square miles.