Maras Salt Mines: Peru’s Ancient Salt Ponds

Thousands of small pools cover the hillside near Maras in Peru’s Sacred Valley. From a distance, they look like a patchwork of white, pink and brown rectangles cut into the mountain. Each pool has a simple purpose: to collect salty spring water and allow the sun to turn it into salt. This is the work carried out at the Maras Salt Mines, known locally as Salineras de Maras.

A worker carries a sack of salt harvested from the traditional evaporation ponds at Salineras de Maras in Peru’s Sacred Valley.

Hand of Punta del Este: The Sculpture on Brava Beach

At Playa Brava in Punta del Este, Uruguay, five giant fingers rise out of the sand. There is no palm or wrist visible above the beach. Only the fingers remain in sight, giving the impression that an enormous hand is buried beneath the ground. Known as La Mano or Los Dedos, the sculpture has become one of the best-known landmarks in the city.

La Mano, also known as Los Dedos, is a monumental hand sculpture by Chilean artist Mario Irarrázabal, located on Brava Beach in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

Kolmanskop: Namibia’s Abandoned Diamond Ghost Town

Kolmanskop is an abandoned diamond-mining town in the Namib Desert, a short distance from the coastal town of Lüderitz in southern Namibia. Its rise began with a single diamond found beside a railway track in 1908. Within a few years, the settlement had become one of the wealthiest mining towns in German South West Africa. By 1956, its last residents had left. Today, windblown sand fills its houses, corridors and former public buildings.

Sand gradually takes over the abandoned buildings of Kolmanskop, a former diamond-mining town in Namibia’s Namib Desert.

Greyfriars Bobby: The Story Behind Edinburgh’s Famous Dog

In Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirkyard, Scotland, a small grave marks a dog whose story became one of the city’s best-known legends. Greyfriars Bobby was a terrier said to have stayed beside his master's grave for fourteen years, returning to the same spot long after the man died. The story is familiar, but some of its details remain disputed. What is better documented is that a dog called Bobby became a much-loved presence in the churchyard during the nineteenth century.

The Greyfriars Bobby memorial fountain at George IV Bridge and Candlemaker Row was unveiled in 1873.

Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier in Russia

The Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier stands in open farmland in Rzhevsky District, Tver Oblast, about 7 km southwest of the town of Rzhev and roughly 200 km northwest of Moscow. Its centrepiece is a 25-metre bronze soldier on a 10-metre mound, rifle in hand and head slightly lowered. The memorial was ready by April 2020, but the pandemic held back the ceremony. It was finally opened on 30 June 2020 with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko in attendance.

A line from Alexander Tvardovsky’s poem “I Was Killed Near Rzhev” is one of the few public references to the battles of Soviet times.

Gilbert Hill: Mumbai’s Ancient Basalt Monolith

In the middle of Andheri West, hemmed in by apartment blocks, stands a black basalt column about 61 metres tall. Gilbert Hill is easy to walk past without noticing, yet geologists treat it as one of the most remarkable rock formations in Mumbai.

A close view of Gilbert Hill’s black basalt, a lava formation about 60 million years old in Andheri West, Mumbai.

Cave of Swallows: Mexico’s Giant Open-Air Pit Cave

Drop a stone into the Cave of Swallows, and you can count several seconds before it lands. Known in Spanish as Sótano de las Golondrinas, this open-air pit cave in the Huasteca Potosina region of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, is often called one of the largest cave shafts in the world. It is a hole in a forested hillside that simply keeps going.

A caver starts the rope descent from the rim of Sótano de las Golondrinas, one of the world’s deepest open-air pit caves.

Welwitschia Mirabilis: The Two-Leaf Plant of the Namib

Welwitschia mirabilis has divided opinions more than most plants. Nineteenth-century botanists found it ugly, even grotesque. Modern researchers see something else: a plant that has worked out how to live in one of the driest places on Earth and keeps going for centuries while doing it. It has only two leaves. Everything else about its story follows from this discovery.

Welwitschia mirabilis is an unusual desert plant native to Namibia, known for its long leaves and remarkable longevity.

Pont-Aven’s Public Toilet on the Aven River

Most towns keep their public toilets out of sight. Pont-Aven, a small town in Finistère in Brittany, did the opposite. At the central crossroads beside the bridge, the public toilets occupy a decorative stone building perched over the river, and many visitors notice it before anything else. The building is dated to 1932.

The public toilets in Pont-Aven, a small town on the Aven River in Finistère, Brittany. 

Stone Wall Trees of Hong Kong

Walk through the older streets of Hong Kong Island, and you will notice something strange. Big, full-grown trees stand on vertical stone walls, with roots hanging down the masonry like thick ropes. These are Hong Kong’s stone wall trees, and nobody planned them.

A stone wall tree on the old retaining wall at Forbes Street, near Davis Street, in Kennedy Town.