Photo: Jacky Haung
From bright blue icebergs in Chile to flooded salt flats in Bolivia, the Earth is filled with awe-inspiring wonders that boggle the human mind. With summer just a stone’s throw away, vacation formulations are well underway for most folks.
Photo: Denys Nevozhai
To help inspire your next trip, Stacker utilized expert destination guides and scientific information from National Geographic, Lonely Planet, and CNN, researching 30 natural wonders that are awaiting your exploration.
Photo: Saad Chaudhry
From The Narrows in Utah’s Zion National Park to the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean, read on to broaden your travel horizons.
Photo: Dave Herring
No list of natural wonders is complete without the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. With over 3,000 individual reef systems, the Great Barrier Reef is larger than the Great Wall of China and the only living structure on the globe visible from space.
Photo: Mannu Moreno
The Iguazu Falls, brushing up against the borders of Argentina and Brazil, boast the world’s largest curtain waterfall—Devil’s Throat, Iguazu Falls’ main attraction, consists of 14 waterfalls all by itself. This natural wonder is known to overwhelm the senses.
Photo: Sasha Lantukh
The Jeita Grotto in the Nahr al-Kalb valley, just 20 minutes north of Beirut, consists of two interconnected limestone caves. Its upper cavern can be traversed on foot, but to view the lower grotto, visitors must take the cave’s underground river by boat.
Photo: John Feiber
Located 200 miles west of Mexico City, it only stopped its erupting in 1952. Legends claim that the cinder cone volcano rose out a local farmer’s cornfield, and over its nine-year eruption period from 1943 to 1952, grew to its present-day height of 10,400 feet.
Photo: Jezael Melgoza
On the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, Victoria Falls (also known as Mosi-oa-Tunya, meaning “smoke that thunders”) plunges spectacular 355 feet to the bed of the Zambezi River. What’s more impressive is that the falls span the entire width of the river—more than 5,500 feet.
Photo: Aman
Photo: Gary Cacciatore