Three incredible places you may have never heard of

Three incredible places you may have never heard of

A tropical paradise on Brazil’s northern coast

Desert sand dunes meet crystal blue lagoons in Jericoacoara, a small fishing village located more than 300km west of Fortaleza. Better known in wind and kite surfing circles, Parisian Victor Matei described the isolated hamlet spot as a place where “time disappeared”, saying that it was the most beautiful setting he’d ever visited.

A sky-high Colombian sanctuary

In the town of Ipiales, Colombia, near the southern border with Ecuador, a Gothic cathedral called Las Lajas Sanctuary floats 100m above a gorge in the Guáitara River.In the 18th Century, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared on the stone gorge wall and cured a young girl and an older man of blindness. Today, that holy wall forms the back of the cathedral, where people still make the pilgrimage to pray for healing and take in the incredible vista.

The Empty Quarter of Abu Dhabi

The emptiness of this region – the largest sand desert in the world stretching across Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The sand is soft, fine, multicolored hues of khaki and orange, and it rolls in windswept hills hundreds of feet high as far as the eye can see, unbroken by tree or shrub or the rarest of clouds. In spite of its name, the Empty Quarter has a few camel farms. Qasr al Sarab, the only resort for hundreds of kilometres, regularly hosts the Sheikh of the UAE in a luxury villa and also has one of the most spectacular pools in the world.

Justyna Frąckiewicz