14 Most Unusual Landscapes in the World That Are Too Beautiful to Be Real

#2. Nambung National Park, Western Australia

Located not far from the coast of southwest Australia are thousands of limestone pillars that rise from the shifting yellow sands. In places they reach up to three and a half meters tall. Some are jagged, sharp-edged columns, rising to a point, while others resemble tombstones. This is the Pinnacles Desert, a part of the Nambung National Park, roughly 200 kilometres north of Perth.

These amazing natural limestone structures were formed approximately 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, after the sea receded and left deposits of sea shells. Over time, coastal winds removed the surrounding sand, leaving the pillars exposed to the elements.

Although the formation of the Pinnacles would have taken many thousands of years, they were probably only exposed in quite recent times. Aboriginal artifacts at least 6,000 years old have been found in the Pinnacles Desert despite no recent evidence of Aboriginal occupation. This tends to suggest that the Pinnacles were exposed about 6,000 years ago and then covered up by shifting sands, before being exposed again in the last few hundred years.

The Pinnacles remained unknown to most Australians until the 1960s, when the area was added to Nambung National Park. Today it receives over 250,000 visitors a year.

#1. Tufa pinnacles at Mono Lake in Sierra Nevada

Nestled at the steep eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada in the Mono Basin, Mono Lake—like so many in the western United States—is the remnant of a much bigger Pleistocene water body called Lake Russell.

Because the basin is closed (i.e., it has no outlet), Mono Lake is hypersaline. Evaporation in the arid climate concentrates salts in waters fed by snowmelt streams off the mountains.

Outlandish pinnacles and castellations of tufa dot the lake margins. These carbonate formations were produced as limestone precipitated around submerged freshwater springs in the salty depths. The tufa towers have since been exposed by dropping lake levels resulting partly from natural fluctuations but also from diversions of freshwater from the lake’s catchment area for human use.

What do you think of these amazing photos? We are sure that you would want to visit these places once in your life. We do so too! The world is such an incredible place to live in!