Mysterious and Weird Places

I always love to travel and wondering if;  is there any places that we should explore and see why other people said these places are strange or weird for tourists to visit. But I found some of these places amazing and mysterious.

1) Crying Stone of llesi, Kakamega, Kenya

The Luhya and Isukha villagers beliefs, is when the stone cries it is a good omen such as an abundant harvest of agricultural crops for the village. The villagers formed a ritual during drought season to bring the rain, and after the rain they hear the stone cry. This symbolic crying stone also cleanse the “victims of incest in the family”. Under the crying stone, a cave lies where the incests victims perform “cleansing rituals” so the family will accept them back. However, scientific studies say, this acid plutonic rock consist of quartz (semi precious stone having spiritual healing properties), alkali (soluble salt obtained from the plant’s ashes consisting large amount of potassium or sodium carbonate that turn litmus into blue), feldspar (group of abundant rock- forming minerals) and mica (group of rocks chemically and physically related to aluminum silicate minerals, commonly found in igneous and metamorphic rocks splitting into flexible sheets used in insulation and electrical equipment). Bur some studies from Geologists, explained that during daytime, when the rocks are exposed to sun and heated, and cool down during night time, the rocks contracts and produces sound.

2) Lake Nyos, Lake Monoun and Lake Kive, Exploding Lakes and killer Lakes

The Lake Nyos also known as the Killer Lake, consists of large out-gassing of carbon dioxide that lowered the lake’s level over a meter and turned the water into a blood-red color. The reported cases of fatality is around 1,700 after 2 hours of contamination from the lake. The two other lakes that are exploding are Lake Monuon at the West of Cameroon and Lake Kivu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

3) Rio Tinto

The Rio Tinto river originates from the Sierra Morena mountains of Andalusia that flows in the south west to the Gulf of Cadiz at Huelva, Spain. Rio Tinto is famous for its very acidic water (pH2) and its deep reddish color due to dissolved iron in the water. Tinto Rio river contains extremophile aerobic bacteria living in the water, and these life forms are causing high acid content. The bacterias feed on the rocks around the river that contains sulfide minerals and iron.

Grand Primastic Spring in Wyoming

The Grand Primastic Spring is the largest hot spring located in the United States located in Yellowstone National Park, in Teton County, Wyoming. It is next to Midway Geyser Basin found in New Zealand. Grand Primastic Spring is known for its vivid colors, as a result of pigmented bacterias in the slimes that grow around the mineral-rich water, that produced colors that ranged from green to red, blue, yellow, orange and brown and recall rainbow and the breaking of light into component colored rays, as by means of optical prism. The pool in the center , results from intrinsic blue color of the spring, and resulting from water selective-absorption of red wavelength of the lights and made all the large body of water to color blue. However, the Grand Primastic Spring water has high purity and the water depth due to extreme hot water spring.

4) McMurdo Dry Valleys

The row of valleys in the Antartica located within Victoria Land, west of McMurdo Sound is known as the McMurdo Dry Valleys and includes geological features of Lake Vida and the Onyx River (Antartica’s longest river). Occasionally the valley’s floor contains frozen lakes that last the whole year with ice thick of several meters thick. It is best known for its “deserts under the ice” in extremely salty water, where  mysterious organisms lived and a subject of ongoing studies and research.

The Blood Falls is the flowing out of the iron oxide-tainted hydrodynamics or plume (a column of fluid moving from one place to another) of saltwater. It is located at the Taylor Glacier, of ice-covered West Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in the Victoria Land of East Antartica.

5) Rotorua, New Zealand

The city of Rotorua, famous for its “rotten-egg aroma” due to geothermal activities of sulphur compounds released down onto the rivers and atmosphere. Geysers nad bubbling steaming hot mud pools, the hot thermal springs and the “Buried Village” or Te Wairoa are located within the city. The thermal activities originate to the Rotorua Caldera where the Rotorua City is located. The waters varies in colors from yellow, orange to green, where tourists visits often.

Champagne Pool Rotorua

6) Fly Geyser Reno

The Fly Ranch in Reno, Nevada features two natural hot springs, on which the other is dormant. The other Fly Geyser, was formed accidentally by a water drill that hit the geothermal sources and spurt continuous steaming water fountains. Fly Ranch is a private property and prohibited tourists to go near.

7) Spotted Lake, Osoyoos, British Columbia

The Klikuk Lake or Spotted Lake located northwest of Osoyoos in British Columbia is a saline endorheic-alkali lake. During summer season, the most of the lake water evaporates and the minerals are left behind that caused the large spots on the lake, depending on the mineral composition at the time of evaporation, causing the spots to vary in colors. The spots are produced of magnesium sulfate, and crystallized during summer season. The minerals remained in the lake and harden forming a natural walkways between or around the spots.

Bermuda Triangle or Devil’s Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is located near the region of Atlantic Ocean, in which ship vessels or aircraft disappear mysteriously. It has no scientific explanation by human errors, natural disasters or pirates abduction or failure of equipments.

9) Kauai, Hawaii

The oldest main Hawaiian Islands and the fourth largest main islands seaside lava projection forming a shelf on a cliff or rock wall.

10) Mount Roraima, (Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana)

Mount Roraima’s mysterious stream

Mount Roraima is a table-top mountain with swerving edge of 400 meter high cliffs on all sides and have a special significance for the indigenous people  of the region and nearby villagers for the legends and myth. At the Venezuelan side, there is a natural staircase-like ramp, to make of easier for the mountain climber to reach the summit. Almost everyday it rains at Mount Roraima that wipes away the nutrients of the mountain top and showing the landscape bare-sandstone surface and not allowing the plants to grow.

11) Salar De Uyuni

The world’s biggest salt flat is located in the Potosi and Ororu departments in southwest Bolivia and no wildlife exists, although there is an abundant water supply, but is undrinkable. The salt flat is known as the Salar de Uyuni and also known as desert of salt in geological terms. However, pink flamingos migrate in this salt flat during the wet season and feed on the short-lived ping algae.

12) Ossetia, (Waiting to Die City)

The Ossetia or called City of the Dead, is located near the Kama Dayton iceberg in the Caucasus mountains of former Soviet Union, now known as Russia. According to legends, a plague spread in the tribe some 1000 years ago, and people here die one after another. For those who still lives, decided to build a  number of stone- houses each with small windows, and awaits there death in their houses. The corpses found inside the stone houses are not decomposed and keep the same position when they died some thousand years ago.

13)  Lake Michigan Triangle, Mysterious Lake

The Michigan Triangle is an area of the Michigan Lake, where unexplained mysteries are involved where several stories of disappearance, strange creatures, time-standing still, slowing down to crawl or speeding up of vessels or some unusual phenomena. One famous story on April 28, 1937, when Captain George R. Donner, captain of O.S. McFarland, disappeared mysteriously from his locked cabin. The ship’s crew searched for him but he was never found.

Eye of Africa, Mauritania

The Strange Eye of Africa  in the Shara Desert of Mauritania looks like a human eye and considered a natural phenomenon an is a structure created by dome shaped underlying geology now made visible by millenia of erosion. A weird and bizarre theory of an ancient belief that the site is a powerful bomb.

14) Suqatra Island, Yemen (Land of The Desert Rose)

The Suqatra Island also called “Socotra”  is located off the coast of Yemen in the Middle East. The island is isolated from the rest of the world, and plants grow in weird and strange shapes. The “Dragon’s Blood Tree“, one of the famous trees in Suqatra, in which the sap is used for dye or alleged used as “aphrodisiac”. The Desert Rose or oftentimes called the “Elephants Leg Trees” also commonly seen in this endangered island ecosystem, a perfect example of nature left to its own evolution and compared to Galapagos Islands.

Galapagos Island

Galapagos Island, official name is Archipelago de Colon, an archipelago of volcanic islands.

15)  Race Track Playa (The Sailing Stones of Racetrack Playa)

The Sailing Stones of Racetrack Playa, located in a flat areas at Death Valley in California. The phenomenon sailing stones,  is one unexplained mystery of the Racetrack Playa. The playa or flat desert, experienced short period of winter rains, and caused slippery ground as the hexagonal flat desert becomes muddy, that causes the stones  or boulders to moved at almost perfect angles from their previous locations.

16) Nine Hells of Beppu, Japan

The “Nine Hells of Beppu” located in Kyushu Islands in Japan, is known for the second largest geothermal water producer in the world. The Nine Hells are found in the same area with its own features and colors due to various kinds of minerals that outflow in every area. The Nine Hells are now a famous tourists attraction. Seven of the mysterious and  weird geothermal hot springs are found in the Kannawa area and known as Umi Jigoku (Sea or Ocean Hell), Oniishibozu Jigoku (Shaven Head Hell), Oniishikozu Jigoku (Cooking Pot Hell), Kamado Jigoku (Mountain Hell), Oniyama Jigoku (Devil or Monster Mountain Hell), Kinryu Jigoku (Golden Dragon Hell) and the Shiraike Jigoku (White Pond hell) and further away from these area is the Shibaseki District where the Chinoike Jigoku (Blood Pond Hell) and the Tatsumaki Jigoku (Waterpout Hell) is located.

17) Pamukkale, Turkey

The Pamukkale terraced pool in Turkey is one amazing, weird and mysterious wonders of the world. According to some Turkey locals, thousand of years ago, a strong earthquake created a big crack on the ground and allowing thermal spring to bring water rich in calcium carbonate to the ground surfaces. Soon the water evaporates, it created a layer to layer of lapis tiburtinus stone (ancient name for Travertine), and walls slowly built up overtime, same as the built up of stalactite forms inside the caves. Thus, they also call this place  “Holy City or Sacred City”, because of the rare phenomenon and important place for healing powers to the milky-white waters of Pamukkale.

18) Moeraki Boulders of New Zealand

These large spherical weird boulders are found on Koekohe Beach, of North Otago coast of South Island of New Zealand, and they are called “Moeraki Boulders”. Some of the boulders weigh several tons, some came from the cliff’s erosions and joined boulders lying on the beaches floor.

19) Hell’s Door Turkmenistan (The Giant Fire Crater)

The Hell’s Door is located in the Kara-kum desert of Turkmenistan in the Derweze Village (or Darwaza). In 1971, a Soviet prospectors team,  drilled into a large chamber filled of natural gases and caused the cavern roof to collapsed leaving a sinkhole some 25 meters deep and 60 to 70 diameters approximately and soon the natural gas became evident creating a deeper flaming hot crater. It is also known as “The Gate of Hell”.

20) Sanquinshan, Garden of the Gods

The Sanquinshan National Park near the Shangrao City in the province of Jiangxu, China, was officially the 7th World Heritage Site designated in China. The beautiful enchanting park is the combination of unique granite geology in the form of weird pillars and outcrops with combined scenic view of misty, foggy and sunsets. Tourists claims that they feel serenity and calmness after visiting the place.