Places on Earth that resemble Bionicle locations

[Airoski]

I'll start with the sunny Caribbean island of Montserrat, ravaged by its volcano in recent years:

 

Which I reckon looks a lot like the island of Mata Nui.

Do you know of any other locations that look like places from Bionicle?

[Toa Smoke Monster]

The only location I can think of at the moment is the pyramid where Onewa and Vakama found the Po-Metru Great Disk in Legends of Metru Nui. It looks like one of the great pyramids in Egypt IMO.

[Kopaka25]

That island resemblance is uncanny....

 

As for other places that resemble BIONICLE locations... I guess the Sahara desert looks like Bara Magna... :/

[Irrie]

I guess that Earth resembles Aqua Magna, but that's kind of blatant. 

There's a monument somewhere in Kiev Ukraine that sort of reminds me of the Metru Nui Colosseum.  

[Sir Kohran]

I think the Coliseum is fairly obviously based on the Colosseum in Rome - both large arenas at (or near) the centre of huge cities.

[Glenfoxx]

I always thought Mt Ihu looked similar to Mt. Rainier.

 

As for Mata Nui itself? Hawaii of course! Er, environment wise.

 

[The Lorax]

This reminds me of a conversation that was once had in the BZPRPG Discussion topic, so I'll just quote it here. It's a bit more geared towards playing the RPG than discussing BIONICLE, itself, but still relevant.

 

 

 

... CURSES! THIS MEANS WE HAVE REVERSED THE SITUATION!The small Kumu Islets with its dangerous wildlife is Australia!And the relatively more mild Mata Nui mainland is New Zealand! 

 

Right, with the Maori and stuff. 

 

That's right, but it's more than just the Maori. The connections run deeper than that.New Zealand is the home of the Maori people, whose language LEGO "borrowed" to make the Matoran language, much of which is still in use in the story.

Both are archipelagos surrounded by huge oceans, and are made up of such diverse environments as icy mountain ranges, volcanic hotspots, large lowland forests, extensive coastline and many waterways, underground cave networks and dry deserts. Both are known for their rather unusual animals. In fact, the flora and fauna of both islands are similar, often carbon copies. Remember the Moa bird? The description we have lines up with this NZ native called "moa", some species of which lived in dry areas similar to Po-wahi. Also, the harakeke plant from MNOG 2 was surprisingly similar to this real world plant, also known to Maori as "harakeke". Wouldn't you know it, it grows well it wet areas, and the fibers was used extensively by Maori to make many things from rope to clothes, bags and anything else you care to mention. The fibres were often extracted from the plant's leaves by rubbing them with a seashell. Sound familiar? Yeah.

 

Mata Nui practically is New Zealand, adapted for a fantasy setting. There are so many links that I could almost play them as the same place (except that NZ does not have a population of magical nanotech beings, sadly). It is possible, without much of a stretch, to assume some New Zealand things will apply to Mata Nui. I'll give an example. A few months ago, one of my characters was stuck in the Le-wahi jungle. He had no supplies or anything else with him, and he eventually got pretty hungry. Now, obviously, he could capture some sort of local rahi and eat that - he's not a picky eater. So I trundle off to BS01 to find out what sort of rahi might be available to catch, and discovered the pokawi. Now, there wasn't much information in the article about this rahi - just its appearance and a brief description of its habitat in Le-wahi. All in all, I found it strikingly similar to the takahe, a bird native to New Zealand. Given all of the above similarities between NZ and MN, it wasn't too much of a stretch for me to assume that the pokawi was the BIONICLE equivalent of the takahe and ascribe to it a few of the Takahe's characteristics in order to describe it better. 

 

 

Aside from that, there is also the small pacific island of Magnaia. Incidentally, this small volcanic isle sit on top of an extensive system of caves and tunnels, many of which remain unexplored. I've never been there myself, but a friend of mine did give me a small stone from inside those very caves. She didn't know of the BIONICLE connection, but it's still amazing.

Edited August 13, 2014 by The Lorax