World's Strangest Places

Floating mountains, bleeding glaciers, and cities built atop the sea are just a few of the world’s weirdest destinations.

Blood Falls, Antarctica

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In Victoria Land (a region directly south of New Zealand), a murderous hue of what looks like blood stains the white face of the 35-mile-long Taylor Glacier. Blood Falls, as this macabre vision is called, is not in fact a frozen cascade of hemoglobin. The scarlet tint derives from a community of sulfur-eating bacteria that dwell deep beneath the glacier in underground lakes—their crimson iron-oxide excretions dye the ice. But death does lurk in the vicinity: so arid are the McMurdo Dry Valleys that when lost seals and penguins wander irreversibly inland, they never decompose. Their mummified remains are strewn about, completing the ghoulish picture.

See It: Snag a cabin on the final voyage of Kapitan Khlebnikov, a Russian icebreaker that will spend 10 days in the region in October of next year before returning back to the service of the Kremlin.

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World's Strangest Places

Blood Falls, Antarctica

Hassan Basagic [1] [1] http://picasaweb.google.com/basagic/Antarctica20062007#5006276990671077970

By Adam McCulloch

From a helicopter window, Antarctica appears colorless: pure white in every direction, a glaze covering the planet. Swoop into the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the bare, naked ground comes into focus, as does a most bizarre sight: a rust-red waterfall oozing down the face of a mammoth glacier. Welcome to Blood Falls—one of the world’s strangest places.

In an increasingly familiar world—where guidebooks and Google Earth would seem to have exposed every last nook and cranny—it’s refreshing to discover places that still surprise. Sure, they may not be as easy to access as, say, the Rockies (which are divine, if not revelatory), but it’s precisely this isolation that has allowed them to evolve their odd characteristics. Venturing into unknown lands may be surreal, but it’s also impressive—and rewarding.

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Blood Falls is just one example of how Antarctica “will change the way you think about life,” says David Dallmeyer, professor of geology at the University of Georgia and guide for Abercrombie & Kent. “I’ve seen azure blues you can’t imagine. I’ve seen three-mile-wide icebergs break in half and roll inwards.” With 50 years’ worth of excursions under his belt, Dallmeyer is not easily surprised, but, he admits, “In Antarctica, there is nothing else like the Dry Valleys. They’re an enigma.”

But Mother Nature isn’t the sole creator of these oddities. In Turkey, the fairy-tale-invoking Göreme National Park results from both natural and man-made handiwork. Its giant sandstone spires, known as hoodoos—which erosion first sculpted into arresting mushroom shapes—were later carved into houses, churches, and underground communities by Christians fleeing Roman persecution in the first millennium A.D. The resultant bustling canyon-land gives the impression of being a human-populated coral reef (a perfect location for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, which was filmed there).

“The Love Valley section of the park definitely raises some eyebrows with its giant phalluses,” says Tony Carne, destination manager for Intrepid Travel, an outfitter devoted to sustainable tourism in delicate regions such as Göreme. “Plus,” he quips, “it’s fun to work the word ‘troglodyte’ into casual conversation.”

Weird and wonderful destinations like these can elicit double takes and openmouthed awe in even seasoned globe-trotters. Many of the strange places that follow are even more striking because most people don’t know they exist. Imagine stumbling upon the Grand Canyon or Great Pyramids of Giza for the first time, and you can perhaps conjure the reactions these rare wonders evoke.

Think you’ve seen it all? Read on: you ain’t seen nothing yet.