Great Natural Wonders of the World

00:00:07 The Earth is indeed an extraordinary planet

00:02:01 Some very famous, others less familiar

00:04:17 funeral mountains

00:05:50 This is the morning glory pool

00:07:51 made famous by Hollywood and so many western films

00:10:34 This is Thor's hammer wielded by the Nordic god of thunder

00:13:03 Slightly acidic water seeps through the ceilings of these vast limestone caverns

00:16:14 Elsewhere in the lowlands humanity has left few marks

00:18:14 and its name in honor of its discoverer Angel Falls

00:21:15 Their summits often hidden in cloud

00:24:58 Most volcanic islands across the Pacific are much older and much smaller than Big Island

00:27:05 350 miles northwest of Hong Kong

00:29:57 dark and austere in summer green and white in winter

00:32:07 especially now in spring

00:35:34 but skims along the horizon

00:37:41 Ngorongoro crater, a gigantic basin 12 miles wide

00:40:16 Here the prevailing westerly winds blowing in from the Atlantic drive the massive sand dunes far inland

00:43:28 in that unimaginable time they've been worn down by the wind and rain and the baking sun and all the other processes of natural erosion

00:45:30 leaving behind relics of these past frontiers

00:48:16 forcing the water onwards through the furthest narrows

00:50:53 This puzzling landscape is known as the Bungle Bungles

00:53:24 that between them creates these intricate limestone structures

00:56:09 breeding in the tropics and migrating to the 2 polar regions to feed on the summer bonanza of krill

20:00:00 nearly to the top of Half Dome