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Eight thousand feet above sea level, this five-century-old pre-Columbian site was once home to the Incas. Until American historian Hiram Bingham publicized his findings of the area in a book called “Across South America,” the mountain-top ruins were widely unknown to anyone living outside of the Urubamba Valley. Since Spanish colonialists had no idea of Machu Picchu’s existence, Incan architecture and design of the buildings were preserved.

Does the arrangement of the 25-ton sandstone blocks at Stonehenge suggest some sort of spiritual prediction? No one really knows. Theories about the nearly 5,000-year-old circular stone structure vary. The most intriguing time to visit Stonehenge is at sunset when a yellow-orange glow can be seen through the magnificent towers’ arches making some people believe that it was originally a place of healing, while others think it was used for ancestor worship.

The 1,500-year-old pyramids, located near the town of Merida, may be less popular than their equivalents in Egypt, but they are just as remarkable. Although there are many structures there like the Temple of the Warriors or the Wall of Skulls, the main attraction is El Castillo, the 78-foot, 91-step central pyramid. The absolute best time to travel to El Castillo is at sunset when shadows give the illusion that a large serpent is sliding down the pyramid.

The Earth’s southernmost point, Antarctica, is the driest and coldest of the seven continents. For a place that is 98 per cent covered in one-mile-deep ice, it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to visit it at all. But there is a strange beauty about Antarctica that is incomparable to anywhere else on the planet. Anyway, while Antarctica has no permanent residents, there are often up to 5,000 researchers working there at a time.

It is believed that hundreds of years ago the natives of Easter Island carved massive heads out of stone to honor their ancestors. Today, there are 887 “moai,” as the statues are called, which create a mysterious, yet intriguing landscape on this Polynesian island, which is a four-and-a-half hour flight from Lima, Peru. The tallest statue on the island, named Paro, is 33 feet high and weighs 82 tons.

North America’s Red Canyon is 277 river miles long, eighteen miles wide, and one mile deep, and if it doesn’t make your mouth drop with surprise, then you might not be human! Most tourists go there by car and there are plenty of spots along the way to pull the car over and have a look from the top. You can also go down into the canyon’s depths and experience the very heart of the canyon by going rafting on the Colorado River, and even spend the night at a hotel below the rim.

Thousands of miles long, the Great Wall of China is the largest cultural object humans have ever built. It majestically snakes through China, winds around rising and falling hills, twists through an enormous countryside, and stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Lake in the west. However, the wall was constructed more than 2,000 years ago not to amaze people, but in an attempt to keep out invading tribes from the north.