The world’s an incredible place, but sometimes I’ll find myself somewhere and actually have to take a second and ask, “Really? This is exists?”
This has happened to me at least four times in my life: in Chapada Diamantina (#45), when I climbed through a cave and then bungee jumped out of the mouth; watching the Northern Lights from a frigid jetty near Keflavik, Iceland (#17); seeing the sun set over the Grand Canyon (#19); and at the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone (#2).
The rest of these I’m only sort of convinced of they exist. So I’ll be thinking of the following pictures as a scientific checklist: I’ll just have to visit every single one to prove to myself they’re real. Feel free to do the same yourself.
It’s the largest hot spring in the United States. The colors of Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring are caused by bacteria and microbes growing around the water’s edge.
Naica Mine, Mexico
These gypsum crystals in the Naica Mine were formed over 500,000 years in underground hot springs. Unfortunately, the caves are closed to the public (as they are super toxic and dangerous).
Aurora borealis, or the Northern Lights, are the result of the collision of charged particles with our atmosphere. They are most visible at high northern latitudes.
Horsetail Fall is a seasonal waterfall that occurs on the east side of the rock formation known as El Capitan. You can see it in the winter and in the early spring. If conditions are just right in February, the water catches the light of the setting sun and turns a fiery orange.
Devil’s Tower in northeastern Wyoming lies in the Black Hills. It is probably most famous for the part it played in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Lake Baikal is a rift lake in Siberia that is the deepest, most voluminous freshwater lake in the world. It contains about 20% of the world’s unfrozen fresh water.
Cathedral Cove is part of Te-Whanganui-A-Hei Marine Reserve on the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand. The rock you see here is known as Te Hoho Rock.
The Nyiragongo volcano is in the Virunga Mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The crater that contained this lava lake fractured in 1977, destroying the lake and killing 70 people.
