Real places on Earth that don't look real...

A free-diver shooting back to the surface for air, backlit by lights on the bottom of the Nah Yah cenote in Yucatan, Mexico - a cenote is like a sinkhole, the result of a collapse of limestone bedrock which exposes groundwater.

Free-divers swim without oxygen tanks, training to hold their breath for progressively longer stretches.

 

Quite possibly the world’s most uninviting beach - a band of marine rubble stretching towards Cape Blossom at the southern tip of Wrangel Island.

At 88 miles north of the Siberian mainland, the water is probably uninviting too.

 

A Shelf cloud in Saskatchewan, Canada.

The appearance of a Shelf cloud usually indicates that there's about to be a sudden drop in temperature, high winds, and heavy rain or hail.
Not to mention panic...

 

Not a crash site - someone's unusual home in Hillsboro, Oregon.

75 year-old retired electrical engineer Bruce Campbell realised his dream of sixty years in 1999 - to live in a plane. He paid $100K for a Boeing 727, a further $20K to transport it from Greece to his 10 acre block of land in Oregon, and another $15K and 20 years converting it into his home.

 

A small herd of caribou outside the community of Anaktuvuk Pass in Alaska.

Located on the traditional caribou migration route, the community’s name means ‘The place of many caribou droppings’ in the local Nunamiut language.

 

Now I would like to have seen a documentary of how he got it there and how he did it up into a house.

 

Me too...what a great idea

 

Oudemansiella mucida - aka Porcelain Fungus or Porcelain Mushrooms. Common throughout Europe, these were pictured on the slopes of Mount Olympus in Greece, and it's easy to see why the Porcelain name was given. Not toxic, but the cap is covered with a protective slime which makes them less than edifying to handle or eat.

 

Arizona's Grand Canyon waking up after a stormy night.
What looks like a fire in one of the gorges is actually the first rays of sunlight breaking through and lighting up the rock.

 

One @NZHorn may recognise - the famous water-bound willows of Glenorchy in the South Island of New Zealand, rising out of the winter waters of Lake Wakatipu.

Famous because the area has been the setting for films such as The Fellowship of the Ring and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - as well as a TV series I’ve just finished watching for the third time - Top of the Lake.

 

The rather imposing Statue of Unity, near Kevadia in Gujarat.

At 182 metres it's the world's tallest statue, and it depicts Indian statesman Vallabhbhai Patel - the first deputy Prime Minister of independent India.

 

Golden jellyfish in Jellyfish Lake, a marine lake on the island of Eil Malk, one of 340 islands in the Pacific’s Palau Group.

The stingless Golden jellyfish differ from others in that they don’t float aimlessly in currents - they actually track the Sun across the lake daily.

 

Lefkes - a small village on the Greek island of Paros - noted for its beautifully kept houses and streets, some almost too beautiful to be real.

Just like these two...

 

Another one off-topic, but it just caught my eye.

Hillside erosion in a Canadian rainforest exposing the snake-like root system connecting trees. Known as the mycorrhizal network, the deep root system of a ‘mother tree’ allows it to send nutrients to other trees in the network which signal it in times of stress. Trees of different species can be connected to the one network - which, I suppose, could be a valuable lesson for some humans.

 

A mountaineer caught in a white-out whilst heading for the summit of Nevado Copa in Peru.

This is one of the reasons why mountaineering never held any appeal for me - even in ideal conditions there’s no way I would be able to walk along that ledge knowing there’s a 20,000 feet drop only inches away from either side of me.

 

I would, but not in a white out. BTW this is not a white out, if it were you would not see the any of the defined edges, it would be totally grey and you would not have any idea where you were and what is up or down. Can be totally disorientating. Nice pic though.

 

In my defence, it was the guy behind taking the photo who described it as a white out - I never experienced such things in Queensland.

 

A solitary tree in the desert in Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia.

The odd looking sky behind it isn’t actually the sky - it’s a sand dune. The patterning is caused by the angle of the early morning sunlight on the sand.