Planet
earth really is a most extraordinary place – as an amazing new book
reveals. Lonely Planet’s Secret Marvels of the World, just out, is a
compendium of the world’s weirdest and most wonderful sights, that
really do have to be seen to be believed. From a grassless golf course
to a cave that looks like Superman’s lair, and from multi-coloured
eucalyptus trees to a lunchbox museum, its pages are a celebration of
the mysterious, mesmerising and downright bizarre.
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El Peñón de Guatapé – Antioquia, Colombia
There are few boulders quite as dramatic as this 650ft behemoth, near
the town of Guatape. Visitors can reach the summit via 649 steps wedged
into a crack on one side. The climb is well worth it, with Secret
Marvels of the World describing the view from the top as
‘show-stopping’. It can be reached by bus from Medellin. |
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Cementerio de Trenes – Uyuni, Bolivia
Eerie is the only word to describe the Great Train Graveyard, which sits
on the southwestern outskirts of Uyuni, near the Salar de Uyuni, the
world’s largest salt flat. Secret Marvels explains how the trains came
to be abandoned: ‘In the 19th century, British engineers built railway
lines to connect Uyuni to Pacific ports, but the collapse of the mining
industry in the 1940s and tensions with Chile meant that the trains were
abandoned and left to rust.’ The best way of reaching it is by taxi. |
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Catacombes de Paris – Paris, France
It’s chic above, but downright spooky below. The bones of around six
million people lie beneath the streets of Paris in 280km of dank
passageways. Officials were forced to move bones into the catacombs
because the cemeteries above ran out of room for the dead. |
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Hang Nga Guesthouse – Dalat, Vietnam
Warped walls, sculpted jungle vines and crooked stairs, welcome to the
guesthouse that was inspired by the surreal art of Salvador Dali. The
beds, says Secret Marvels, ‘are cradled in cauldronlike chambers’, while
‘latticed windows look like spiders' webs’.The exterior, meanwhile,
resembles a melted candle. |
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Lake Kaindy – Tian Shan Mountains, Kazakhstan
The Kebin earthquake in 1911 was responsible for creating this
mesmerising lake, which sits 2,000 metres up near Kazakhstan’s border
with Kyrgyzstan. The event triggered a landslide in the Tian Shan
mountains that created a natural dam – and the glassy 400m lake that
drowned a forest. Lake Kaindy is very popular with divers but is also an
enticing sight from dry land. It can be reached by car on the A351 from
Almaty.
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