At 299,792 kilometers per second, light races across the cosmos with predictable precision.

But travel to certain corners of our planet, and you'll see it bend the rules of physics into something that looks more like magic.

These five destinations prove that even the most fundamental forces can surprise us.

Stand on the world's largest salt flat after a rain, and the horizon vanishes. The shallow water transforms 10,000 square kilometers of white salt into the world's largest mirror, reflecting the sky with perfect clarity.

The optical illusion is so complete that photographers struggle to orient their cameras. Where does your reflection end and you begin? The indigenous Aymara believed this place was where the world was created. When you see light pooling and reflecting in impossible ways, you might believe them too.

When to go: January and February, when seasonal rains create the mirror effect.

During an Arctic summer, the sun becomes a rebel, refusing to set for weeks or even months. This is the midnight sun. It bathes the far north in perpetual golden hour, with light hitting the atmosphere at extreme angles that scatter it into endless shades of amber and rose.

Your circadian rhythm won't know what hit it. Reindeer graze at 2 AM under a stubborn sun. Children play in bright daylight at midnight. Time itself seems negotiable. Come winter, the tables turn, and the polar night descends, bringing the aurora borealis in ribbons of green and violet.

Where to witness it: Northern Norway, Svalbard, or Finland's Lapland from late May to July.

Climb to the summit of Brocken in Germany's Harz Mountains on a misty morning, and you might see your own ghost. When the sun sits at your back and fog fills the valley below, your shadow projects onto the clouds, magnified to enormous proportions and surrounded by a rainbow halo called a glory.

This eerie optical phenomenon occurs when light waves diffract and reflect off tiny water droplets in the mist, bending back toward you in colored rings. Medieval mountaineers who saw this thought they'd witnessed angels. The Brocken spectre influenced Goethe's writing. It's your shadow, yes, but transformed by light into something vast and otherworldly.

Best chance: Early morning or late afternoon on misty days, particularly in autumn.

Lake Natron's waters are so caustic they can calcify animals that die in them. But it's the lake's colors that truly disturb the eye. Fed by mineral-rich hot springs, the shallow lake supports vast colonies of cyanobacteria that turn the water deep reds and pinks. From above, it looks less like water and more like Martian terrain.

The high pH and salt create optical conditions that make light dance strangely across the surface. Depending on the sun's angle and algae density, the lake shifts from blood red to orange to pink, sometimes within the same afternoon. The colors barely seem real, because here light interacts with chemistry in ways our brains struggle to process as natural.

Photography note: The lake is best viewed from the air, where its full chromatic strangeness reveals itself.

For one or two seconds as the sun dips below a clear ocean horizon, something extraordinary can happen: a brilliant emerald flash appears where the sun's upper rim makes its final bow.

As the sun sets, its light passes through increasingly thick layers of atmosphere, which refracts different wavelengths by different amounts. Blue and violet scatter away. Red and orange disappear first below the horizon. For the briefest moment, only green remains visible. A final chromatic burst before darkness. Spotting it requires perfect conditions: a flat horizon, clear air, and patience. But when you see that emerald spark burning against the darkening sky, you'll understand why sailors once considered it a gift from the sea.

Best viewing: Anywhere with an unobstructed ocean horizon, especially Hawaii, the Caribbean, or aboard an ocean crossing at dusk.

Until next time,

Emails From Afar Team

While this newsletter brings you the magic, the strange, and the downright odd by email, Letters From Afar takes it a step further—with real letters sent through the mail.

Our snail mail subscription whisks you away to the world’s most exciting destinations, one handwritten letter at a time.

Written from the perspective of an explorer from the past, each letter invites you to journey to distant lands through the most old-world form of communication: a letter delivered to your door.