The adventure experts at Lonely Planet reveal the secret marvels of the world

(Source: Dailymail)

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.
 

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.


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.


 

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.


 

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.


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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