The 5 most spectacular landscapes on Earth.doc

重点词 spike [spaik]n. 长钉，道钉；钉鞋；细高跟; vt. 阻止；...
· consumption [kən'sʌmpʃən]n. 消费；消耗；肺痨
· pulp [pʌlp]n. 纸浆；果肉；黏浆状物质; vt. 使…化成...
· fortress ['fɔ:tris]n. 堡垒；要塞; vt. 筑要塞；以要塞防守
· vault [vɔ:lt]n. 拱顶；撑竿跳；地下室; vi. 跳跃；成穹...
· testament ['testəmənt]n. [法] 遗嘱；圣约；确实的证明
· dagger ['dæɡə]n. 匕首，短剑; vt. 用剑刺
· heritage ['heritidʒ]n. 遗产；传统；继承物；继承权
fuse [fju:z]vi. 融合；熔化，熔融; vt. 使融合；使熔...
· bout [baut]n. 回合；较量；发作；一阵

The 5 Most Spectacular Landscapes on Earth发布时间：2012-05-05文章出自：
Mother Nature is an evil bitch that wants us dead. We know this, we accept it, we try to burn one plant a day as petty revenge against her for it and we move on with our lives. But sometimes her traps are so unsubtle, so obviously, blatantly designed to do nothing but murder human beings in the most awful ways possible that we can't help but stand and applaud her sheer balls. In that spirit, here are five of Mother Nature's more vicious bear traps: #5. Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park -- Madagascar
Olivier Lejade
The Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park is a protected UNESCO world heritage site, but this park doesn't need any tollbooths, rangers or even a tall, spiked fence. Why? Because it's literally nothing but spiked fence. Tsingy is a 250-square-mile tiger trap made up of massive limestone obelisks riddled with jagged spears. And yes, they will cut your pretty face. And no, they won't not cut your pretty face, no matter how much you cooperate.
Wikipedia
Sometimes the Earth gives a freebie to the World of Warcraft design team.
Biologists call the area a bio-fortress. The park is so impassable and uncharted, in fact, that every time a team goes on an expedition there, they find approximately five new species. They're literally tripping over entirely unseen life-forms -- a photographer for National Geographic documented these creatures, presumably while picking crocodile-headed lizards out of his canteen and shaking bizarre, dancing crimson bugs out of his sleeping bag.
National Geographic
Sometimes a forest of daggers just isn't enough.
It shouldn't be surprising: 90 percent of all species found on Madagascar are endemic, so if we go vaulting over the Earth's barbed-wire fence on the Island of Extremely Rare Shit, we're probably going to see some new things. And yet despite all of that sweet groundbreaking science temptation, the vast majority of the park remains completely unexplored to this day.
Olivier Lejade
So yeah. There are definitely dinosaurs in there.
That's really a testament to how inhospitable it is: We weren't just talking about "spikes" and "cutting" earlier because the area looks "spiky" from a helicopter. Those things really are razor-sharp. "Tsingy" is actually the Malagasy word for "where you cannot walk barefoot." When one expedition visited, they couldn't navigate with ordinary rock-climbing gear because (and these are actual quotes from an actual scientist) "Tsingy chewed equipment and flesh with equal ease. At times it was like climbing amid giant skewers, the consequences of a fall suggested in the mutilated trunks of toppled trees below."
Marco Zanferrari
Sometimes the formations produce Yes album covers just to mess with you.
Maybe we should amend our analogy a little: It's less like nature's junkyard fence and more like the Earth's teeth, where it stabs and grinds you into a fleshy pulp for easy digestion.
And just in case you still think we're exaggerating, here's how Steven Goodman (the quoted scientist above) ended his trip: He and his team were walking on a normal, plain, flat path, when he turned his ankle just a little bit and stumbled. That's all -- he didn't even fall all the way; just took a brief knee.
Olivier Lejade
We can't say this would be our preferred method of climbing.
It took them two days to hobble back to a hospital to remove the limestone spike from his kneecap. #4. The Boiling Lake -- Dominica
dominica-weekly
The Boiling Lake in Dominica is remotely located, 200 feet deep and straight-up boiling, 24/7. No, it's not "kind of warm" and "really bubbly, so it looks like it's boiling, " like a natural hot spring. If you take a therapeutic dip in the Boiling Lake, you'll come out poached. The water temperature at the edge of the Boiling Lake sits at 197 degrees Fahrenheit on average. That's on the shore; no measurements at all have been taken at the center, where the water is perpetually roiling, because, well, would you want to kayak out into a giant cookpot with a thermometer?
Antoine Hubert
Those who've braved the intense heat have fused with their boats. "Boataurs, " we call them.
Tourist sites mention that the rocks are slippery at the lake's edge, so you should exercise extreme caution while visiting. Even more prudent: Just don't go. There's no cause for "clocking a few weeks out of the office" to "take the ol' fam" down to the fucking lake that cooks human beings.
Although, hey, maybe we're being too close-minded here. This guy went for a visit and had a pretty good time.
stormchaser
We hear steaming food before consumption is healthier.
He even slung up a zipline to mosey over the center of the lake. Once there, he took a water sample and boiled some eggs for lunch. You know -- fun times. They "turned jet black" when submerged in the water, and nobody's quite sure why that is, but that didn't dissuade him; he says "they still made a pretty decent lunch."
stormchaser
"Want in on these bad boys?" #3. The Bolton Strid -- Yorkshire
geograph
This is the Bolton Strid, and we have to admit, it's a pretty innocuous-looking thing to be on a list of nature's most dangerous booby traps. It appears to be no more than a quaint country brook.
Now, this is what the Strid looks like a bit upstream, where it's called the River Wharfe:
geograph
All British guidebooks use "quaint" and "picturesque" at least four times a page.
That's ... a really big friggin' river. So what happened between there and the Strid? Did the river split, or flow into a lake or something? Nope, the Strid is still the whole Wharfe; it's just been flipped onto its side. That means that while it's only about 6 feet across, and appears to be no more than a few feet at its deepest (as we tend to assume of all cutesy little forest streams), nobody actually knows how deep the Strid goes. We simply cannot measure it, because there's a powerful undercurrent sweeping down into the vast, unseen caverns and massive underwater pockets that hold all of the rest of the river's water. Though if there happens to be a bout of particularly dry weather, the waterline does start to drop, and you can just see the tops of the giant formations below.
Wikipedia
We're pretty sure you need someone like Gollum to navigate through here.
All of that adds up to one simple, terrifying fact: Nobody who has ever fallen into the Strid -- that harmless-looking brook up there -- has lived to tell about it. Swimming in the Strid has a 100 percent mortality rate. Though there are signs and placards warning about the dangerous water hazard, they're not always seen: Here's a news report about a couple that went for a walk near the Strid on their honeymoon and went missing.
Both of them.
Forever.
geograph
"And yet, I'm still hungry."
It's relatively common for people to assume they can jump the creek, walk across its stones or even wade through it (again, just looking at it, the Strid really seems to be only knee-deep in places, and certainly not the instant, precipitous drop into a watery grave that it is). Most of the time, they never even find the body. Which means there are just dozens of corpses down there, pinned to the walls of the underground chasms, waiting for you to join them ...
It's exactly how water works in a video game: It looks all stupid and harmless, but the second your foot touches the surface, you get some bullshit drowning animation and die instantly.
geograph
"That's it, kids, a little farther back ... haha, oh, I'm such a card!
美里藏刀的五大奇景
发布时间：2012-05-05
文章出自：译言
原文链接：点击查看
    译完以后半响无语，地球上竟然会有这般奇妙的地方。一定是我太孤陋寡闻了吧，对这些地方居然是闻所未闻。由于我百度不到他们的中文名，很抱歉不得不把他们的英文名字或者当地文字放在文中了，怕亵渎了这些雄伟瑰丽的地方。原文作者笔力深厚，文采斐然而又不失之幽默，我文笔浅薄，真怕浪费了这一篇好文章。
    大自然时而像个恶魔，我们终将死在她手中。对于这一点，我们了然于胸却无可奈何，明知道是虚度光阴，却只能每天消耗啃食她孕育的生灵，作为小小的报复，然后一如既往地生活。然而有时，她的陷阱又是如此俗套与明显，她是如此明目张胆地把我们每个人以最可怕的方式终结，而我们却无计可施，唯有惜时，着眼于她的美好。本着这种枕着美好等死的精神，她为我们准备了五个最凶残、最没有人性和最令人想往里面跳的陷阱。 第五名来自马达加斯加的Tsingy de Bemaraha国家公园。
    Tsingy de Bemaraha 国家公园是受保护的世界遗产，但是却不收取任何门票费，不需要任何护林人，甚至连尖顶的围栏也不需要。为什么？因为它本身就是一个巨大的尖顶围栏。Tsingy方圆250平方里，石灰岩的悬崖峭壁犹如锯齿般耸立着，能轻易地割破你美丽的脸蛋，就连老虎怕也难以出入其间。人是根本无法在上面攀爬的，无论他们有相互配合的多么默契，所以连割破脸的机会都没有。
    看，大自然还给了战斗机设计师们一些灵感呢。
    生物学家们称之为生物壁垒。因为它比青天还要难上，这里的许多生物至今未能探明，实际上，每次有科考队过来，他们都能发现大约五个新的物种。而且都是闻所未闻的生命形态--《国家地理》杂志的一位摄影师，在一次追踪疑为外出觅食的双头蜥蜴的过程中，发现了一只兴高采烈、手舞足蹈的昆虫破茧而出，并记录下了这些生物。
    单有一个这些还是不足为奇的。
    因为在马达加斯加发现的生物，百分之九十都是当地才有的。如果我们继续往大自然更深处走去，也许会发现更多的稀有生物。尽管人类已经取得了斐然的科考成绩，国家公园的绝大多数地方仍然是出于未被探索的状态。
    所以啊，搞不好里面还有恐龙呢！
    事实证明了这里是多么不适合居住居住：我们称之为”刀山剑石“并不仅仅是因为从直升机上看下像，而是因为这些岩石真的很锋利。在马达加斯加语里，"Tsingy"的意思就是”你不能光脚做工的地方“。科考队来的时候都不能穿着普通的登山装备去攀爬（一位科学家称），因为Tsingy的岩石能轻而易举地吃掉你的装备。攀爬的人看起来就像一串串挂在岩石上的果实，如果不幸滑落，连树干都能被压断。
    有时候，错落有致的岩石映衬着蔚蓝色的天，像一张专辑的封面一样，逗你玩。
    也许我们的比喻需要修改一下：它不像大自然的废物丢弃站，而是地球母亲的牙齿，能轻易地将白白胖胖的你碾碎嚼烂。
    也许你会觉得是我夸大其词了，那就让我们看看史蒂夫·好男人（之前提到过的那个科学家）是如何结束他们的探索之旅的：他和队友们走在普普通通、平坦的小径上（如下图），靠着踝关节的扭动，一点点艰难向前地挪动。
    这似乎不是我们喜闻乐见的攀爬方式吧？
    他们花了2天的时间才步履蹒跚地回到医院，清理石灰岩在习惯上留下的伤口。第四名，沸湖--多米尼加岛（拉丁美洲岛屿）
    沸湖位于多米尼加岛的偏远地区，水深200英尺，自湖底至湖面，水腾如沸。不是温水，是沸水, 往上直冒泡的那种，就像自然行程的沸泉。如果你要在这里泡温泉，那就相当于把你清蒸了。近岸的湖水均温达华氏197度。这只是岸边水温，而湖中心的水温，由于常年沸腾，根本无法测量。没有人想驾着小皮船，拿着温度计，把自己往这口沸腾的大锅里送。
    我们管那些敢于驾船到可能融化他们船的湖中去的人“白痴”。
    景点的指示牌时刻提醒着游人们，岸边石头很滑，观赏时千万小心。有时更直接：不要前往。也许有人计算过多久煮熟一个鸡蛋，不过没有人计算过多久可以烫死一个人。
    听说吃食物之前，蒸一蒸更健康。不过，这人呢？
    他将自己悬空挂在了湖中央的上方，并用网兜着在水里煮了一些鸡蛋当午餐，真是美好时光啊。网在沸水里变成了黑色，没有人可以解释这是为什么。不过这并不妨害他认为，这些鸡蛋是他体面可口的午餐。
    你也想来一个鸡蛋么？第三名，来自约克郡的Bolton窄谷
    这就是Bolton窄谷了，我们不得不承认，作为最危险、最没有人性、最令人窒息的全球最美五大景点之一，它是最安全的，它看似与普通的乡村小河无异。
    它的上游，沃夫河。
    所有的英国导游书籍都至少会用“古色古香”和“风景如画”等词，在一页里形容它数遍。
    那真是一条要命的河.从上游到下游的涓涓细流，究竟发生了什么呢？是它分出支流了，还是流入湖里了？没有，窄沟依旧是上游的沃夫河，只不过是宽和深倒过来了。它大约有六英尺宽，几英尺深（如果只是肉眼去看，很合理的假设），而实际上，没有人知道，它有多深。底下巨大的岩洞吞噬了所有的喝水，根本无法测量里面到底有多深。遇上大旱，水位开始回落，你能看到沟底壮阔的裂缝。
    我们很确信你需要像Gollum一样的人来探索这里。
    所有这些都验证了一个简单而又可怕的现实：没有人在这个看似寻常无奇的水沟里摔倒，还能活着回来的。在这里游泳的死亡率是百分之百的。对于随处可见的警告栏或指示牌，人们总是轻易地视而不见：这里有一则报道，有一对新婚夫妻来这里度蜜月，然后就失踪了。
    两个人都失踪了。
    “我还饿着呢。”
    如果只是看着这条窄沟的话，一个人觉得自己可以跳过去活着摸着石头过河，那是再正常不过了（表明上看起来，它实在是平凡无奇）。实际上，很多时候连他们的尸体都找不到。底下有几十对人儿，等着你来加入。
    它就像我们在视频游戏里看到的水一样，看着平凡无奇，一旦你涉足水面，立即陷入万劫不复之地。

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