Imagine a world where the mountains are striped with candy colors and people aredwarfed by the landscape's immensity. Such a place exists in china's northwestern Gansu Province, where 24 million years of vibrant stone and mineral deposits have created rainbow-striped mountains. The tinted peaks were fashioned by uplift from the Earth's tectonic plates- the same ones that formed parts of the Himalayan range, while rain, wind, and erosion shaped them into the jagged world seen today. Located around the city of Zhangye, the area covers more than 10 sqkm and the vista is most dazzling after a rainfall, where the colors glow even brighter than usual.
Taking a hike in the extraordinary landscape of "El torcal" about 30 kms north of Malaga certainly makes you feel as if you are in another world if not another time. There are plenty of well signed routes of different lengths. The most established and longest is the yellow route, and for the less adventurous there is a much shorter green route. The hiking isn't challenging in terms of distance or stamina, but the paths are more like rocky, dry river beds, with a totally uneven e surface. so you need to be agile and have decent walking shoes.
During the Jurassic Period, this was in fact the seabed. Over millions of years seashells and other ocean detritus created the limestone that we now see today. Later, this ocean floor was violently forced upwards by immense pressure creating the mountains near Antequara: all about 100 millions years ago. This stunning place now reaches over 1300 metres above sea level now, and the vulnerable limestone has been sculpted by the natural forces of rain, wind and freezing winters, creating a remarkable landscape. Geologists call this a karst environment and supposedly this is one of the best.
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