World’s secret rooms

We see beautiful places everywhere we go; huge mountains, ridiculous plains, scary jungles and nice forests are all great places to experience nature, but how often do we venture into the world beneath us? Unless you’re an avid spelunker, or a troglodyte, the answer is probably not too often. Here we take a look at two gorgeous examples of the world’s secret rooms underneath us.

Beautifully Chaotic

We all remember the explanations; stalactites need to hold on “tight,” and if stalagmites try hard enough they just “might” reach the ceiling some day. At least, that’s one version out of countless rhymes and lessons children learn when studying caves. However they’re learned, they’re never fully understood until seen, and once seen they are never forgotten. Strange and wonderful at the same time, these formations and others like them that take thousands of years to grow, only take seconds to change a life forever when seen in their full splendor. To add to that appeal, every cave is different. Above we see two in stark contrast: First, the Onondoga Cave in Missouri, with strange rock “lilly pads” and “colons” as the photographer jokingly described them. Beneath that, the famed Reed Flute Cave in South China, creatively lit and spanning over 240 meters of acoustic cavern.

Fire and Ice

A number of things came together in an eons-long ballet of creation to make the caves that we find today.  Most that we’d find throughout the world would fall into one of two major categories; either ice/water carved them out, or lava flows birthed them.  These origins leave us with geologic oddities that are more like alien landscapes than anything we’ve ever experienced first-hand.  We see the results above, with caves in Vietnam, Scotland, and Norway.  The sea cave in Scotland is especially interesting to note; known as Fingal’s Cave.  Though it is a sea cave now, its history is volcanic in nature, and left it with an unusually man-made appearance.