One report on the quest to name the world New Seven Wonders – natural features, this time round, with human artifacts already decided – described the contest as "Herodotus meets American Idol". The contest might also be called Eurovision for Geographical Marvels, the difference being that unlike the song contest, compatriots of the geographical marvels can vote.

This latter point did not help Bulgaria where, in spite of a local media campaign that exhorted people to do their patriotric duty in solidarity with the Belogradchik Rocks – which even featured on a 2009 election campaign stop by one party – the Rocks lost out as the competition entered its third phase, after a panel made its shortlist.

This third phase has seen, as of July 21, a list of 28 features identified, out of a list of 77. The final phase will be decided solely by popular vote, by phone and at the website new7wonders.com, and the result will be announced in 2011.

The 28 finalists are:
Amazon, Latin America; Angel Falls, Venezuela; Bay of Fundy, Canada; Black Forest, Germany; Bu Tinah Shoals, United Arab Emirates; Cliffs of Moher, Ireland; Dead Sea, Palestine/Israel/Jordan; El Yunque, Puerto Rico; Galapagos Islands, Ecuador; Grand Canyon, United States; Great Barrier Reef, Papua New Guinea/Australia; Halong Bay, Vietnam; Iguacu Falls, Brazil/Argentina; Jeita Grotto, Lebanon; Jeju Island, South Korea; Kilimanjaro, Tanzania; Komodo National Park, Indonesia; Maldives, Maldives; Masurian Lake District, Poland; Matterhorn/Cervino, Switzerland/Italy; Milford Sound, New Zealand; Mud Volcanoes, Azerbaijan; Puerto Princesa Underground River, Philippines; Sundarbans, India/Bangladesh; Table Mountain, South Africa; Uluru, Australia; Vesuvius, Italy; and Yushan, Taiwan.

A complete gallery of the sites, with links, is available at Wikipedia, a site more easily accessible than the actual new7wonders.com site, which is not only not that easy to navigate but also, because of a pop-up window that refused to go away, was inadvertently preventing further press registration.

The process of decision is overseen by a panel headed by by Federico Mayor, who served as chief of Unesco from 1987 to 1999 – even though in 2007, Unesco issued a statement distancing itself from the New Seven Wonders campaign. The UN organisation has its own World Heritage Site system – for example, Table Mountain, one of the candidates in the New Seven Wonders competition, is already a World Heritage site, and is not alone in that.

The BBC said that the panel, which also includes Greenpeace co-founder Rex Wyler, made their choices based on "geographical balance, diversity and the importance to human life."

The earlier contest that came up with Seven Wonders made by human hands – including the Taj Mahal, the statue of Jesus in Rio and Petra in Jordan among them – saw a reported 100 million people vote. Few failed to note that the only one of Herodotus’s original list of the Seven Wonders of the World still extant, the Great Pyramid at Giza, did not get enough votes to be included in the 2007 list.

It is, by the way, the fact of voting being internet-based that is the foundation of one of Unesco’s objections, that participation is not truly democratic but is limited to people with internet and telephone access.

The New York Times said that organisers expected that with the natural wonders, the final decision would be made after, by the end of the process, a billion people would have voted.

After domestic reactions to the 2007 contest were mixed, with some countries producing celebrity endorsements and publicity campaigns while others officially ignored the whole thing, the new contest requires each country to have an organising support committee backing up their candidates.

Inevitably, media in the countries which have features that made it into the list of 28 have noted the fact, usually along with a list of objects that have been dismissed from the running.

One South African website, reporting the fact that Cape Town’s Table Mountain had made it into the finals, put it this way: "Table Mountain has made it into the final round of the New 7 Wonders of Nature contest, beating the Atacama Desert in Chile, the Azure Window in Malta and the Rock of Aphrodite in Cyprus for a hot place on the shortlist".

Even though no single contestant, by definition, is the work of human hands, that very human thing – politics – has made its presence felt.

As Israel Today reported the day after the 28 finalists were announced, the Dead Sea almost did not make it into the contest.

The rules of the contest stipulate that natural wonders located in more than one country required all of the countries to form a joint supporting committee. The Palestinian authority originally refused to be part of the committee because it was at first backed on the Israeli side by a Jewish settler council.

"After Israel’s ministry of tourism agreed to become the official sponsor on the Israeli side, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas acquiesced and agreed to join Israel and Jordan in nominating the Dead Sea," Israel Today reported.

"This campaign should contribute to the appreciation – to the knowledge – of our environment and not just the one in our country but worldwide," says Bernard Weber, founder of New7Wonders.

A ‘Reserve List’ has also been created, including destinations such as the Atacama Desert, Christmas Island and Mount Olympus.

Candidates on the Reserve List could be promoted if one of the official finalists is suspended or eliminated from the competition.