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Dallol, Ethiopia
As if a giant hypercolour pen exploded on the moon, the Dallo hydrothermal fields in the Erta Ale Range offer some incredible fluorescent colours - all from nature.
Continue reading and see more bizarre landscapes
Found in the northeast of the Erta Ale Range in the rather grim-looking Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, the craters are the lowest subaerial volcanic vents in the world. The bright yellow of the sulphur mixes with the white salt for this bizarre effect.
For centuries Ethiopians have made the long trek to the Danakil Depression - one of the hottest and harshest environments in the world - to collect salt from the sun-blasted earth before transporting the slabs back by camel.
Life is harsh for the thousands of camel herders and salt extractors who use traditional hoes and axes to carve the 'white gold' out of the ground in the Danakil Depression.
Many of the salt diggers live in Hamad-Ile and hire out their services to different caravans. The work, however exhausting, still draws thousands onto the baking salt flats.
Zhangye Danxia Landform, China
What looks like something created with coloured sand in primary school is in fact a colourful sandstone formation in the hills near Zhangye City. Geologists say the same tectonic plates that formed the Himalayas created the layer cake effect and centuries of water erosion complete the design.
Walkways have been established throughout the area by the government to accommodate walkers keen to admire what is said to be 24 million years worth of red sandstone and mineral deposits.
The Wave, Arizona
The sweeping design of this sandstone rock formation is found in the Coyote Buttes area of the Arizona Strip in Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness area that would be hugely popular with hikers were it not so heavily protected.
Experts say the best photo opportunities come at midday but first visitors must get one of the 20 permits released each day for the area, with 10 of them released via a lottery four months in advance and the other ten dished out the day before an intended visit.
Experts say the best photo opportunities for The Wave come at midday but first visitors must get one of the 20 permits released each day.
Once permission is granted to visit there are no marked hiking tracks to get you there, as authorities are keen to preserve its natural beauty formed by the erosion of Navajo Sandstone during Jurassic age.
The 190 million-year-old formation is made of sand dunes which turned to rock through time. They are stacked on top of another and hardened by deposit of calcium salts - causing the vertical and horizontal layers.
Svinafellsjokull glacier, Iceland
Svinafellsjokull glacier, Iceland
Svinafellsjokull glacier, part of the great Vatnajökull Glacier in Skaftafell National Park, may look totally inhospitable but with the right gear and guide it's a popular hiking destination. Icelandic Mountain Guides are among a host of companies running tours and charge from £65 for a four-hour walk.
The glacier has also achieved an extra level of fame recently after being one of the filming locations for the blockbuster film Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, where is wasn't a huge stretch for the icy landscape to co-star as space.
Fairy Chimneys, Turkey
The bright coloration of the spring is it's real point of marvel, with its shades of red, orange, yellow, green and blue.
Legend has it that fairies living in ancient Cappadocia in Turkey's Central Anatolia lived underground, and these bizarre rock formations were the chimneys of their hidden residences.
Another theory is the distinctive feature of the World Heritage Listed area were formed first by layers from rock developed over time courtesy of volcanic eruptions, and then erosion.
Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
It looks like a bubbling volcano ready to blow but is in fact the third largest hot spring in the world, behind only after Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand and Boiling Lake in Dominica.
Found in the Midway Geyser Basin at Yellowstone, it is also the biggest hot spring in the United States, but it's not size that makes it so remarkable.
The bright coloration of the spring is it's real point of marvel, with its shades of red, orange, yellow, green and blue.
The unique park has a 40-mile-long slush of molten rock and crystal under the nation's first national park.
Instead of a cone with a hole, the caldera is an interconnected maze of gas and water covering almost 60 miles of Wyoming's northwest corner, along with parts of Montana and Idaho.
More than 10,000 mud pots, boiling rivers and geysers act as nature's pressure-release valves, keeping the heated monster from exploding.
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