Seven Coloured Earths: Meet Mauritius’ rainbow-coloured sand dunes
Mother Earth is home to a host of kaleidoscopic geographical wonders, starting from The Rainbow Eucalyptus Groves of Hawaii to the Rainbow Mountain of Peru, the Grand Prismatic Spring of Wyoming, USA and much more. While we are sure there are more in the list, today, we want to focus on an unusual yet colourful geographical feature in Chamarel, a south-western region of island nation Mauritius. In fact, it has quite a distinct name: The Seven Coloured Earths!
Seven Coloured Earths: A sneak peek
Locally deemed as Terres de Sept Couleurs (in French), or the Seven Coloured Earths, it refers to a small area (8.5 hectares) of sand dunes comprising sand of seven different colours: Red, brown, violet, green, blue, purple and yellow. These vivid and prismatic sand dunes are special as the sands seem to settle spontaneously in separate layers giving it a surrealistic and aesthetic appearance. Interestingly, Seven Coloured Earths is not an official name. In fact, there are several variations of the name such as Chamarel Seven Coloured Earths, Chamarel Coloured Earths and simply Coloured Earths.
How did the seven colours end up there?
As it turns out, the entire island of Mauritius is susceptible to volcanic activity that has occurred throughout history (600 million ago). This in turn has resulted in decomposition of volcanic rock such as basalt for thousands of years and converted them into clay. Over time, this clay too transformed into ferralitic soil by the process of hydrolysis (chemical reaction that happens when a molecule of water breaks down surrounding chemical bonds). Now, before we move on, let us tell us you what ferralitic soil means. It refers to the soil that is formed when rock is changed into soil when exposed to forces such as water and wind.
This ferralitic soil contains a lot of minerals such as grained clay, iron oxides, aluminium oxides and so on. Now, when this soil cools down at different temperatures, it ends up creating a series of colours. Having said that, how they consistently and spontaneously separate and then settle and are mostly immune to erosion are mysteries left to be solved. Experts suggest that all the iron and aluminium rich elements are not water-soluble and thus do not wash away the psychedelic hues.
Other attractions nearby
While the Seven Coloured Earths is located in the Chamarel Geopark, there are also two other tourist attractions in the vicinity: one is of course the Chamarel Waterfalls, and the other is the iconic Tortoise Park that houses different species of tortoises. The area although discovered in the 19th century opened for visitors in the 1960s.