Natural beauty is impossible to define, and truly in the eye of the beholder, and it would be pointless to try to describe one natural site as more beautiful than other. At the same time, it would be hard to imagine a beholder who was not stunned by the almost indescribable stilettos of rock and trees forming Madagascar’s Tsingy de Bemaraha nature preserve or bowled over by the ultimate expression of liquid frozen in place that is Iceland’s Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon.

These are all among the crème de la crème of landscapes, and they are all utterly breathtaking. Their very diversity defies easy comparison. Are glaciers, which covered nearly a third of the planet during the last ice age, but are now rare enough to require an effort to seek out, more or less beautiful than shifting desert sands studded with wind-carved rock pinnacles or formed into towering dunes that appear to be on fire? Is a deep canyon carved from rock by flowing water more impressive than a plant that can outlive the very rock around it, like the awesome baobob trees of Africa and Australia, which can live nearly 2000 years?

The range of landscapes that could qualify as the best is so vast it has even experts confused. The Seven Natural Wonders of the World, a not-for-profit organization devoted to encouraging people to discover, explore, and engage the natural wonders of the world, is in the process of expanding its list from the historically accepted, and somewhat befuddling seven (Aurora Borealis, Grand Canyon, Paricutin volcano, Victoria Falls, Great Barrier Reef, Mt. Everest and Rio’s harbor) to seven on each continent, just for starters.

The organization explains, “it is fair to question how the wonders were originally selected; why Victoria Falls was chosen and not Iguazu Falls.” Accordingly, “Seven Natural Wonders recognizes… that this world is full of amazing, beautiful, and unique ‘natural wonders’ that deserve their spotlight and recognition.”

Here are 12 such landscapes, some of which are largely unknown but all of which certainly deserve their spotlight and recognition.

Jokulsarlon, Iceland

This lagoon is home to incredible ice formations so curvaceous they appear to have been waves frozen solid instantly and then polished to a glimmering blue smoothness. The lagoon sits as a buffer between Europe’s largest glacier and the sea, and as a result there is constant calving of the ice, forming icebergs that eventually drift out to sea, so no matter how often you visit, the view is always different and always changing, sometimes dramatically. Earlier this year, a huge section of the Breidamerkurjökull glacier shattered and as a result, Jokulsarlon just became Iceland’s deepest lake.

Bryce Canyon, U.S.

Bryce Canyon is not technically a canyon at all, but rather the east slope of the Paunsaguant Plateau, though once you see it, this nitpicking hardly matters. The stunning vistas around its 37-mile loop road showcase the park’s signature feature, countless delicate red rock spires carved by millions of years of wind and water, known locally as “hoodoos.” Thanks to its famous lack of ambient light pollution and ultra-dark night sky, it is also a Mecca for astronomers, with ranger led programs on summer nights.

Chott El-Jarid, Tunisia

One of the world’s largest salt lakes, Chott El-Jarid is also a rare endorheic or terminal lake, a closed system whose waters never reach the sea. Instead, with annual rainfalls of under four inches and summer temperatures in excess of 120 degrees, the lake often evaporates completely, leaving an enormous salt pan covering roughly 2000 square miles. Visitors who come to see this unique landscape may get more than they bargain for: when dry, Chott El-Jarid is famous for producing fata morgana, an optical mirage that conjures up visions of everything from castles to people.

Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina

In the Austral Andes near the Chilean border, Los Glaciares National Park has been a UNESCO World Heritage site for nearly 30 years. The park is devoted to glaciers, hence its name, and Perito Moreno is its most famous resident because of a unique nonstop cyclical action that causes this glacier to alternately advance and retreat. As part of this process, it is constantly calving, regularly producing spectacular ice falls from its exposed leading edge.

Olgas, Australia

Three dozen red domes erupting from the otherwise flat and barren Australian outback are shocking enough to warrant their aboriginal name, “many heads.” The moving sun famously plays tricks with the earth’s color, and the Olgas can appear dramatically different based on the time of day. The Olgas are located in the same National Park, Uluru-Kata Tjuta, as more famous Ayers Rock, or Uluru, but the beauty of the Olgas is starkly different from its neighboring monolith. Plus, you can actually hike into the formation, through the internal Valley of the Winds, and see it up close and personal.

Flaming Cliffs, Gobi Desert, Mongolia

This hot and barren patch of desert was named for the incredibly vivid blazing orange of its rocks by noted paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, who famously discovered dinosaur eggs here in the 1920s. An inhospitable ecosystem with little but sun, rock and sand, it is easy to imagine dinosaurs still roaming here, yet this enclave of the desert, with its rock spires and buttes, is a notable departure from the vast sand dunes stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction in much of the surrounding Gobi.

Avenue of the Baobobs, Madagascar

Baobab trees are found only in Africa, Australia and on Madagascar, and are both huge and long lived. They can tower up to 100 feet, reach nearly 40 feet in diameter, and have been know to live well in excess of 1000 years, and closer to 2000. In Madagascar, they have been decimated by man, one reason that this particular group, about a dozen trees laid out in near perfect symmetry along a dirt road—quite understated for an “avenue”—has been given special protection.

Tsingy de Bemaraha, Madagascar

So dense and needle-like are the worn limestone points comprising this natural preserve in Madagascar that it looks like nature’s version of a hairbrush. The earth has many examples of what geologists call karst topographies, where a layer of water soluble rock, usually limestone, dissolves over time causing fractures and sinkholes, but this is perhaps the most dramatic of them all. The barren stone spires are known locally as “tsingy,” hence the park’s name, but to the surprise of many visitors, the preserve also include vast wetlands, mangrove forests and a deep river valley, all teeming with wildlife.

Chocolate Hills, Philippines

The name of these unique mounds comes from the fact that the green grass covering them turns deep brown during the annual dry season, but is does not hurt that they bear a striking resemblance to Hershey Kisses. The stunner is how perfectly uniform each of the conical hills are, and inevitably, first time visitors simply cannot believe they are not man made. However the scale of this construction project was best left to Mother Nature: There are too many of the hills to count—estimates range from over 1,200 to 1,700!

Bungle Bungles, Australia

The Bungle Bungles are a vast massif rising from the desert of Western Australia, with an apparently endless series of curvaceous rock towers that appear almost windswept, but are most distinct thanks to their “tiger stripes,” alternating horizontal layers of orange and black, making them look like giant malformed candy corn. Given the immense size of the range, the best view is on a sightseeing flight over it, but guided four wheel drive tours take visitors within the seemingly impenetrable maze to a series of caves, gorges, tropical pools and Aboriginal art. The Pernululu National Park, home to the Bungle Bungles, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Pinnacle Desert, Australia

Nature’s version of the classic Zen garden, interestingly shaped stones set amidst a blank canvas of sand, is found not in Japan but in Western Australia. As its name suggests, the area within Nambung National Park is a desert landscape of pure reddish sand broken only by the presence of seemingly out of place pinnacles, most standing from just few inches to several feet tall. It is the incongruity of the pinnacles rising out of the sand at all, absent any other sign of mountains, cliffs or rock formations, which gives the region its peculiar charm. The small scale of the pinnacles, the tallest of which are barely 12 feet high, lets visitors walk among them and contemplate the confusing scene at eye level.

El Tatio Geysers, Chile

The second largest active geyser field in the Western Hemisphere, El Tatio is set apart form its bigger rival, Yellowstone, by the fact that its 80-plus geysers are all in close proximity in a flat expanse of nothingness, creating a dramatic scene of multiple steam eruptions that make it appear almost as if the earth itself is on fire. Then there is the unusual altitude at which the geysers are found, over 13,000 feet above sea level, nearly the height of the tallest mountains of Colorado. Intrepid visitors can also bathe in the geysers’ mineral rich geothermal pools.

Image Credits: Getty Images

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