Mount Roraima, Venezuela/Brazil/Guyana

Since long before the arrival of European explorers, the mountain has held a special significance for the indigenous people of the region, and it is central to many of their myths and legends. The Pemon and Kapon natives of the Gran Sabana see Mount Roraima as the stump of a mighty tree that once held all the fruits and tuberous vegetables in the world. Felled by Makunaima, their mythical trickster, the tree crashed to the ground, unleashing a terrible flood.Roroi in the Pemon language means blue-green and ma means great.

In 2006, Mount Roraima was the destination for the award-winning Gryphon Productions two-hour television documentary The Real Lost World. The program was shown on Animal Planet, Discovery HD Theater and OLN (Canada). Directed by Peter von Puttkamer, this travel/adventure documentary featured a modern team of explorers—Rick West, Dr. Hazel Barton, Seth Heald, Dean Harrison and Peter Sprouse—who followed in the footsteps of British explorers Im Thurn and Harry Perkinswho sought the flora and fauna of Roraima in the mid-19th century. The adventures of those explorers may have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's seminal book about people and dinosaurs, The Lost World, published in 1912. In 2006, The Real Lost World team were the first scientific team to explore the caves of Roraima, only recently discovered. Inside they found intriguing "carrot" formations growing in the 2 billion year old caves. Dr. Hazel Barton returned in 2007 on a NASA funded expedition to investigate the features growing on the cave walls and ceiling: evidence of extremophile cave microbes eating the silica-based walls of the cave and leaving dusty deposits on ancient spiderwebs, forming these unique stalactite type shapes.

In 2009, Mount Roraima served as inspiration for a location in the Disney/Pixar animated movie Up. The Blu-ray version of the movie disc bonus footage features a short film (called Adventure Is Out There) about some of the Pixar production team going to Mount Roraima and climbing it for inspiration and ideas for the making of Up.

Bamboo Forest, Japan

Sagano Bamboo Forest is located in Arashiyama, a district on the west outskirts of Kyoto, Japan.
Sagano Bamboo Forest is one of the most amazing natural sites in Japan.

One of the most interesting facts about Sagano Bamboo Forest is the sound which the wind makes while it blows amongst the bamboo. Amazingly enough, this sound has been voted on as one of the “one hundred must-be-preserved sounds of Japan” by the Japanese government.

As mentioned he Sagano Bamboo Forest is not too far from Kyoto’s main streets – (30 minutes by train).
Another interesting fact – the railing on the sides of the road is composed out of old, dry and fallen parts of bamboo.