1. Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina
It is the most striking of the 365 block of ice in the Park of Los Glaciares National in Patagonia. Its fame has grown over the last seven years as the number of visitors exceeded 500,000 annually. El Calafate, the nearest town has also changed: from 4,000 people had moved to over 20,000, not counting the tourists staying in about one hundred hotels and cabins around the area. Note that the huge mass of ice is a spectacle which is surpassed only by the rupture of the frozen arc vast that occurs every so often.
2. Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA
If you want to be part of the four million people that visit each year this majestic construction of nature, you have to get used to the spectacular dimensions that it offers: it is 446 miles long and nearly 1,600 feet deep. You should know that you can walk along the road that skirts or if you want to experience a real adventure, you can go lower in the river and observe the traces that are left on earth, which is the passage of more than 2,000 million years.
3. The terraces of Yunnan, China
For hundreds of years the inhabitants of the southern part of this region dug and formed dug artificial terraces in the mountains in order to plant rice, and left this colorful picturesque landscape. But the most attractive thing about this place is its rich culture, which has the largest number of ethnic minorities in the country. Of the 56 ethnic groups that exist, Yunnan has 25 of them. So it might be possible to find the only pictographic writing of the world until old warriors groups were in South area of Asia. This city has become one of the first points of departure to Tibet.
4. Cliffs of Moher in Galway, Ireland
If you are afraid of heights you better not go near the edge of the cliffs, as the height of230 meters can leave you literally breathless. If so, choose a boat ride to see the magnitude of the formation of this rock which is more than8 km long and is visited by over a million people every year. It is important not to miss the spectacle of the waves of the Atlantic, which for millions of years have swallowed the overburden rock to form these magnificent depths.
5. Iguazu, Argentina and Brazil
An upcoming “ace” in all the lists of recommended places is Igazu. Don’t forget to visit the place that was discovered from the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century. Moreover, the place is made up of 275 waterfalls fed by the flow of the Iguazu River. The Devil’s Throat is the most visited, it is 80 meters high and because of that reason the visitors may be less than one meter in the fall. Its ‘cataracts broke their own record last year, since they received more than one million tourists (unbelievable).
6. Uluru, Australia
To visit this rock formation that reaches 348 meters in height is necessary to have the permission of the Aboriginals Anangu, who are the guardians of this sacred place and serve as tour guides. If you are going to be successful, you can enjoy the charm of this legendary place that takes its greatest splendor in the sunset (since their color turns red). In wetter times the rock acquires a silvery gray hue (with a bit of black) due to growing algae in the water sources. But be careful because not everything is allowed here, you cannot use a scale and there are some sites that it is off-limits period for photography and video cameras.
7. Cappadocia, Turkey
Cappadocia was created three million years ago, and this plain accumulated ash and lava happened because of the eruption of two volcanoes nearby. When a dry rock was the layer of a porous lightweight wind, the sculpting water commissioned to create this bizarre landscape, which is crowned by valleys of needles, with cones and with the famous twisted fairy chimneys (inhabited by locals). If you decide to visit the best kept treasures of this unique geological formation in the world, you will have to make several sacrifices like: riding a donkey in dusty unpaved roads. In the end, you will find out that it was worth paying for it.
8. Torres del Paine, Chile
This natural park has 181,000 hectares and in it you can enjoy a varied landscape of valleys, mountains, waterfalls, rivers and lakes, crowned by glaciers and surrounded by lakes with different shades of color between blue and green. The main attractions are: the mountains and the huge variety of flora and fauna. Moreover, it is one of the most visited sites in Chile. Last year it reached 141,000 visits and it is believed that by 2012 it will reach 160,000 tourists annually..
9. Mount Cook, New Zealand
If you want to climb the highest mountain in this country, expect to live six full days of adventure. It is an easy ascent and is necessary to spend between 16 and 20 hours in order to reach the top, depending on the physical conditions of each tourist. If you are not prepared to scale it, you can enjoy the scenery that is offered by this land. It is a nature reserve, discovered in the seventeenth century, which receives most of the visitors to the country (approximately 2 million).
10. Banff National Park, Canada
One of the most visited parks in the world, which receives each year more than five million tourists, who apparently are delight by the majestic Canadian Rockies but it is said that it also causes serious environmental damages. Its range of landscape is approximately 6641 square kilometers and it is varied to: extensive meadows, glaciers, lakes and forests that are adjacent to other parks
By Elsi Hasanaj
Photo : KPix74, jason_harman, Oasis Overland, hirsti99, jpaton1963, Eric Lafforgue, cosmic_kid99, Say Hueque Tours in Argentina, English Granpa, Oscar del Rio, Dan Ransom, William Yu, Adriana Y., hefesto, Viktoria, Vitaly Afanasyev, Christopher Michel, Phattana Sangsawang, Jeff Clow
