"Photographer Chris McLennan captures Johnny Tate’s 330 foot abseil into the Lost World Cave in New Zealand’s Northern Island."
via all-that-is-interesting.com
Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere
©Copyright Alfred Molon
The Reed Flute Cave near Guilin is the most spectacular caves I have seen so far in Asia. It's a huge underground cave system with stunning rock formations, stalagmites and stalactites, illuminated with coloured lights. The cave can hold comfortably 1000 people.
"The Cave of Swallows, also called Cave of the Swallows (Spanish: Sótano de las Golondrinas), is an open air pit cave in the Municipality of Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The elliptical mouth, on a slope of karst, is 160 by 205 feet wide and is undercut around all its perimeter, further widening to a room approximately 995 feet by 440 feet ) wide. The floor of the cave is a 1,094-foot freefall drop from the lowest side of the opening, with a 1,220-footdrop from the highest side, making it the largest known cave shaft in the world, the second deepest pit in Mexico and perhaps the 11th deepest in the world."
"Earlier this year, the CTX camera team saw a crater containing a dark spot on the dusty slopes of the Pavonis Mons volcano. We took a closer look at this feature with HiRISE and found this unusual geologic feature.
The dark spot turned out to be a "skylight," an opening to an underground cavern, that is 35 meters (115 feet) across. Caves often form in volcanic regions like this when lava flows solidify on top, but keep flowing underneath their solid crust. These, now underground, rivers of lava can then drain away leaving the tube they flowed through empty. We can use the shadow cast on the floor of the pit to calculate that it is about 20 meters (65 feet) deep."
"This monograph celebrates the most unusual landscape in central Chilean Patagonia, the marble caverns of Lago Carrera. The surreal beauty of this unique corner of Patagonia has won it the designation, Santuario de la Naturaleza, (a protected Nature Sanctuary) from the Chilean government. These are the slot canyons of the far South. The color palette is different but the magic is similar, and just as strong.
The incredible set of pictures has been captured by landscape photographer and environmentalist, Linde Waidehofer, 67, from Colorado, USA.
'It is the water that formed the unique shapes of the marble walls,' explained Ms Waidehofer in her book on the caverns, Blue Light.
Linde Waidhofer has been charging $5.00 for most of her eBOOKs. But her PayPal shopping card system per book was too complex and time-consuming. So now she would like to try something different. You can download any of these eBOOKs and enjoy them, without paying. But after you have looked at them, if you feel they are special, and worth something to you, then we'd like to ask you to pay something via the PayPal DONATE button — it's up to you. (And any amount you send goes directly to Linde Waidhofer, period.)
But Linde's Unknown Patagonia eBOOK is an exception. Please, do not send a penny for that one. Linde wants as many people as possible to see it, and learn about this rare, beautiful, and potentially threatened region. So help her spread the word. Enjoy her Unknown Patagonia eBOOK, then share it with as many people as you can. Both Linde and Western Eye Press believe that the more people learn about this amazing landscape, the easier it will be to try to protect it. This is breathtaking photography in the service of a grand cause. Thanks!
"Shared by Argentina and Chile the deepest lake in South America is famous for its trout and salmon fishing. The waters of General Carrera Lake are beautiful, a glittering combination of emerald, turquoise, aquamarine and azure. The sky may be blue but the waters seem bluer still.
However along its banks, directly below the Andes, sheer marble cliffs present themselves to further astound the visitor. Over the millennia they have been weathered and folded to create a stunning cathedral of marble, Cavernas de Marmol."
"High above a canyon, the Cenobio de Valeron is an impressive network of somewhere between 200 and 300 caves spread out over eight floors that were used as granaries. Connected by passages and steps and once flanked by high, looming towers, according to old accounts that have been preserved from the time of the Spanish conquest, the Cenobio de Valeron are spotted with round and rectangular chambers that were once dug by hand with animal bones and rocks as instruments"
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