PLANET EARTH
Human beings venture into the highest parts of our planet at their peril. Some might think that by climbing a great mountain they have somehow conquered it, but we can only be visitors here. This is a frozen alien world. This is the other extreme - one of the lowest hottest places on planet Earth. It's over a hundred metres below the level of the sea. But here a mountain is in gestation. The mysterious tepuis of Venezuela isolated mountain plateaus rising high above the jungle. This is our planet's final frontier, an inner world where only the most adventurous dare to go. Beneath our feet are countless miles of cave shafts and passages. The Cave of Swallows in Mexico, 400 metres to the bottom, deep enough to engulf the Empire State Building. This is the biggest cave shaft in the world. It's huge bulk is sustained by mere microscopic creatures of the sea Plankton. A third of the land on our planet is desert. These great scars on the face of the Earth appear to be lifeless, but surprisingly none are. In all of them life manages somehow to keep a precarious hold. Not all deserts are hot.
Fifty-mile-an-hour winds blowing in from Siberia bring snow to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.
From a summer high of 50 degrees centigrade the temperature in midwinter can drop to minus 40, making this one of the harshest deserts of all.
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| From Pole to Pole
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Imagine our world without sun. Male Emperor Penguins are facing the nearest that exists on PLANET EARTH - winter in Antarctica. It's continuously dark and temperatures drop to minus seventy degrees centigrade. In the great island of New Guinea there are 42 different species of birds of paradise, each more bizarre than the last. This forest is so rich that nourishing food can be gathered very quickly.
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| Mountains
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Human beings venture into the highest parts of our planet at their peril. Some might think that by climbing a great mountain they have somehow conquered it, but we can only be visitors here. This is a frozen alien world. It's over a hundred metres below the level of the sea. But here a mountain is in gestation.
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| Freshwater
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Only 3 percent of the water on our planet is fresh. Yet these precious waters are rich with surprise. All life on land is ultimately dependent upon fresh water. The mysterious tepuis of Venezuela isolated mountain plateaus rising high above the jungle. This was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Lost World,' an imagined prehistoric land.
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PLANET EARTH 
