- It might be hard to believe these places exist, but they do.
What’s your favorite landscape? Maybe you’re into an expanse of rolling hills and farms, a white-sand beach and an open ocean, or perhaps a thick, foreboding forest.
Or maybe you haven’t yet seen your favorite landscape because you didn’t know it existed.
Some vistas around the world are so outlandish and bizarre that you might mistake them for made-up movie sets or maybe foreign planets. Yet, there they are, waiting for you to go see them for yourself.
Here are seven of the craziest landscapes you can find on Earth.
1. Giant’s Causeway, Ireland
You might think nature doesn’t really care for precise repeating geometry. Go see the Giant’s Causeway on Ireland’s northern coast and you’ll change your mind.
Really, nobody could blame you if you thought the area was somehow man-made. The Causeway consists of thousands upon thousands of interlocking hexagonal and octagonal basalt columns.
However, this strange landscape wasn’t chiseled by human hands. Instead, the columns are the results of a volcanic fissure eruption that happened roughly 50 million years ago.
In addition to the regular columns, you can find multiple other types of equally odd formations.
2. Toadstool Geologic Park, Nebraska
The Toadstool Geologic Park is located in the Oglala National Grasslands in northwestern Nebraska. Unlike you might think based on the name, you won’t find mushrooms in this arid landscape.
Instead, the park is littered with weird, mushroom-like rock formations called “toadstools.” They consist of a flat(ish), wide “caps” sitting atop a thinner “stem.”
The formations are the result of various rock materials eroding at a different pace. The caps consist of more resilient rock, which leads to the stem eroding faster until the whole thing looks like a stony mushroom.
Many of the toadstools have collapsed since the park’s opening, so it might take a while for you to find a perfect specimen for photos. It’s worth the effort, though.
3. Riisitunturi, Finland
In summer, the slopes of the Riisitunturi mountain in northern Finland are covered in sprawling pine and spruce forests. But once winter arrives, the mountain transforms into an alien, pure white snowscape.
The most striking feature is the trees, which get completely packed with snow. Often, you can’t even see the trees — only irregularly shaped blobs of icy snow rising from the white ground.
It might be tempting to go poke the trees and see the snow fall off, but you’re better off not doing that. One spruce, for instance, can pack up to three tons of snow, which you really don’t want falling on you.
If you can’t make it to Finland, you can find similar sights in Finland elsewhere as well. Scandinavia, Siberia, and Japan all have regions where winter overwhelms the land.
4. Pamukkale, Turkey
In Turkish, “Pamukkale” means “cotton castle.” Instead of cotton, though, this strange formation consists of shining white pools filled with pristine, blue mineral water.
The pools are the result of natural hot spring activity in the area. Warm, mineral-laden water bubbles up from the ground and fills the pools.
As the water evaporates, the minerals stay behind, forming the pure white walls and terraces of the blue pools. The most fun part is that you can bathe in the pools, completely immersing yourself in this unique scenery.
5. Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Salad de Uyuni in southwestern Bolivia is the world’s largest salt flat. Covering more than 4,000 square miles, it’s a vast, utterly flat expanse of white salt crust.
The salt was left behind by an ancient lake that evaporated. There’s something unsettling about the lifeless plain stretching out as far as the eye can see.
Salar de Uyuni isn’t completely featureless, though. The salt crystals tend to form hexagonal lines on the ground, adding to the otherworldly appearance.
Yet, the area is at its most gorgeous during the rainy season. The rains leave a thin layer of water on top of the salt, forming a calm, perfect mirror of the sky and the surrounding mountains.
6. Tianzi Mountain, China
If you were told to imagine an old Chinese painting, you might picture an ink drawing of a gnarled pine tree sitting on top of a pillar of stone. That’s not some Chinese fantasy imagery — that landscape exists and it’s called Tianzi Mountain.
Here, you will find the Yu Bi Peaks. They are thin rock columns thousands of feet high that tower over the mountain’s forested terrain.
While the pillars are an awesome sight at any time, they’re at the most striking when the area’s thick fog sets in. The rocky peaks rising out of a white cloud are one eerie yet beautiful sight.
If you do go visit Tianzi Mountain and think it looks strangely familiar, that might be because the area inspired the terrain of the planet Pandora from the Avatar movies.
7. Cave of the Crystals, Mexico
Out of all the locations on this list, the Cave of the Crystals in Mexico is perhaps the most alien. This cave, sitting nearly 1,000 feet underground, is filled to the brim with hundreds of enormous crystals.
These are some of the largest naturally formed crystals ever found. The largest of them (that has been found) measures more than 37 feet in length.
Visiting the cave, however, isn’t currently possible. At the moment, it’s flooded with mineral-rich water that resulted in the crystals’ formation in the first place.
Even if the cave was empty, it would take some resilience to explore it. Temperatures in the cave can reach 135 degrees Fahrenheit and the air is so humid that it condenses in your lungs and prevents you from sweating.