Deadvlei (The Dead Marsh)

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the above photograph was just a surrealist painting, but you'd be wrong. The incredible scene, as hard as this might be to believe, is actually a photograph of a real place you can visit, and it looks like this nearly all the time. The image depicts Deadvlei, or the “Dead Marsh,” where long dead trees sit in stark contrast to their background, the tallest sand dunes in the entire world. The Dead Marsh wasn't always this way though. It was once an oasis in the desert, teeming with life, that formed after a freak event caused the Tsauchab river to flood, allowing many camel thorn trees to grow. Unfortunately, the temporary oasis eventually dried out when a dought hit, and the encroaching sand dunes soon wiped out the vegetation that had managed to thrive in the desert. Today, the sun-scorched, century-old skeletons of the trees are all that remains, a glimpse into a paradise that existed for only a moment in time.