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15 of the world's most colorful landscapes

By Marnie Hunter, CNN
January 4, 2015

Mother Nature is not afraid to go technicolor for the right effect. These eye-catching landscapes are among the world's most vivid. Some are completely natural, while others have been helped along by humans. It's no easy feat to reach many of these spots, but they're all worth a closer look.



Dallol, Ethiopia

The Dallol hydrothermal field is northeast of the Erta Ale Range in one of the lowest and hottest areas of the desolate Danakil Depression in Ethiopia. The Dallol craters are the Earth's lowest known subaerial volcanic vents. Salty hot springs featuring a rich palette of colors dot the area. There are hot yellow sulphur fields among the white salt beds.

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Caño Cristales River, Colombia

Called "The Liquid Rainbow" and "The River of Five Colors," Colombia's Caño Cristales River puts on a splashy show each year between July and November. An eruption of colorful algae brings a predominantly blood red color to the river when the water levels are right. Guides offer tours of the area, which is part of the national park Sierra de La Macarena in the department of Meta.

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Terraced rice fields, Yuanyang County, China

The mirrorlike pools of Yuanyang County's flooded rice terraces in China's Yunnan province allow for an array of intense visual effects. Ancestors of the Hani people crafted the terraces by hand more than 1,000 years ago to irrigate the red rice crop. The terraces change with the seasons; in the winter and spring, flooded paddies create reflective pools, which give way to rippling ribbons of bold green in the summer growing season.

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Luoping Basin, Qujing Prefecture, China

Neon-yellow canola flowers blanket China's Luoping Basin in March. Each spring a festival celebrates the bright sea of golden flowers.ar, attracting tourists looking to camp and hike in the wide-open spaces.

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Lake Natron, Tanzania

This caustic lake along the Great Rift Valley in Tanzania is extremely salty, hot and inhospitable to most plants and animals. However, flamingos and other wetland birds thrive here alongside a species of alkaline tilapia and the salt-loving microorganisms that give the water an otherworldly red hue.

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Lake Baikal ice, Siberia, Russia

With a maximum depth of about 5,250 feet (more than 1,600 meters), Lake Baikal in Siberia is the world's deepest lake. It also contains nearly 20% of the globe's unfrozen freshwater reserve. The lake produces a mesmerizing clear turquoise ice when it does freeze.

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Tulip fields, Lisse, Netherlands

Visitors flock to the Netherlands each spring to wade in knee-deep fields of tulips. From mid-March to the end of May, saturated fields of flowers dot the landscape. Mid-April is considered the peak of the flowering season.

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Fly Geyser, Nevada

This colorful curiosity on private property in the Black Rock Desert in Washoe County, Nevada, is largely unknown because it's not open to the public. But the owners do offer occasional tours, and it's visible from the road. Evidently a man-made accident, this odd formation grew and evolved after a hole drilled in the earth began to spew geothermally heated water. The resulting buildup is this fantastic fountain.

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