Catherine Price
Page 14
Vacations often take place around the water, so it’s tempting to think that a pig lagoon might be a combination of two great things: a swimming hole and BLTs. In fact, what could be better?
If only. As the receptacle for all the waste generated by a modern pig farm, pig lagoons are filled not with water but with shit—and not just shit but everything else that falls through the grates of the pigs’ cages. Blood, afterbirths, dead piglets—they all find their way into the lagoons, which, thanks to blood and bacterial interactions, are not brown but pink.
Lagoons can cover an area of up to 120,000 square feet and reach depths of about three stories. (The average pig produces three times as much feces as your average human, and we slaughter tens of million of pigs in the United States each year—you do the math.) The result is massive stagnant pools of waste contaminated with antibiotics, heavy metals, salmonella, giardia, cyanide, and everything else that passes through the pigs. Unlike most human waste, this sewage is never treated.
Occasionally the lagoons’ polyethylene liners rip. If too much waste seeps under the liners and ferments, the ensuing gas pocket can rise up in the middle of the lagoon like a giant pimple, pushing pig sewage out into the surrounding land. Of course, the farmers are already putting it on the land—there’s so much waste that a common way of reducing the lagoons’ volumes is to spray the liquid onto fields as a fertilizer, or sometimes even to pump it directly into the air in hopes that some will evaporate. The resulting pig vapor contains gases like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, and when inhaled can lead to bronchitis, asthma, nosebleeds, brain damage, seizures, and even death.
But inhalation is nothing compared to the ultimate risk—falling into a lagoon. Consider what happened when a worker in Michigan accidentally toppled in: “His fifteen-year-old nephew dived in to save him but was overcome, the worker’s cousin went in to save the teenager but was overcome, the worker’s older brother dived into save them but was overcome, and then the worker’s father dived in,” wrote Jeff Tietz in Rolling Stone. “They all died in pig shit.” It’s hard to think of a more horrible way to go.
Chapter 95
Sohra, India, 10 A.M., During Rainy Season
While beautiful, the Indian town of Sohra is home to two seemingly contradictory phenomena: it is one of the world’s wettest places, and yet every year, it suffers from drought.
Located almost five thousand feet above sea level, it gets hit full force by the Bay of Bengal arm of the Indian Summer Monsoon, which drops an average of about 450 inches of rain per year, much of which falls during the morning. But thanks to Sohra’s high elevation and deforestation, the water doesn’t stick around—it runs off to the plains of Bangladesh, taking with it a healthy amount of soil and leaving Sohra’s residents with a scarcity of potable water. Adding to the problem: the town has no reservoirs. Instead, when it rains, it pours—and when it stops, there’s nothing safe to drink.
Chapter 96
The Thing
I will forgive you if, driving along Interstate 10 in Arizona, you stop to see the Thing. How could you not? Much like the Winchester Mystery House (see p. 20), billboards for the Thing—some 247 of them—advertise its existence for miles in each direction. MYSTERY OF THE DESERT, they tease. WHAT IS IT?
Whatever it is, it only costs a dollar—and besides, it’s the only rest stop for miles.
But before you plan a family vacation around the Thing, let’s clarify what you’ll see. After you walk through a cave-like entrance in the gift shop, a path of yellow footprints leads you through two metal sheds, each filled with antiques and art of dubious quality and authenticity. In addition to a large caged display of wooden figures being tortured, the first shed is home to a car carrying several grumpy-looking plastic men. 1937 rolls-royce, a yellow sign above it announces. THIS ANTIQUE CAR WAS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN USED BY ADOLF HITLER… THE THING IS, IT CAN’T BE PROVED.
The second shed is filled with objects of such supposed value that the designers of the Thing arranged them on scraps of polyester carpet in glass-faced plywood boxes. Among them: a so-called “ancient” churn dating all the way back to eighteenth-century Kentucky, an old grocery scale, and a sculpture of cows having sex.
Resist the urge to linger. The third shed is the home of the legendary Thing, housed in a white cinderblock box below a final yellow sign—and it’d be a bad idea to allow your excitement to build up for too long.
So what is it? An alien? A live dinosaur? No, my friends. The Thing is a desiccated mummy, holding another baby “thing” in its arms, its nether regions covered by an oversize hat. No further explanation is provided.
Believers point to the Thing’s shriveled face and exposed rib as proof that it’s a real mummy. But when the Phoenix National Public Radio station KJZZ did an investigation into its origins, it discovered that the Thing might actually be the work of a man named Homer Tate, a former miner and farmer who found a second career in creating props for sideshows. Using papier-mâché and dead animal parts, he spent his retirement crafting curiosities like devil babies and shrunken heads, which he advertised as “a wonderful window attraction to make your mother-in-law want to go home.” Regardless of who’s looking at it, the Thing is likely to have the same effect.
Colin Gregory Palmer/Wikipedia Commons
Chapter 97
Four Corners
There’s something reassuring about the boxy shape of the states in the American West. It’s as if surveyors got sick of dealing with the complicated borders of states like Maryland and just started drawing lines. The cleanest examples of this are the boundaries separating Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Their straight, perpendicular borders meet at a spot called Four Corners, which is famous for being the only place where four states touch.
In 1912, this intersection was commemorated by a small cement pad. Clearly inadequate for such an important site, it was replaced in 1992 by a bronze disc embedded in granite. Emblazoned with each state’s seal and bordered by the phrase FOUR STATES HERE MEET IN FREEDOM UNDER GOD, this new, larger plaque is much better suited for the main tourist activity at Four Corners: getting down on all fours so that you can take a picture of yourself with each limb in a different state.
If you go to Four Corners, make sure that you too engage in this geographic Twister. I say that because except for a small demonstration center where vendors hawk Native American jewelry and fry bread, there’s not much else to do. As the Four Corners’ PR department itself admits, “The area is very remote” and “The scenery immediately surrounding the Four Corners monument is somewhat bleak.”
Adding to the confusion over why the monument counts as a tourist attraction: according to research by the National Geodetic Survey, it’s actually in the wrong spot. In April 2009, the survey found that the Four Corners monument is a bit over 1,807 feet east of where it should be. Perhaps fearing the wrath of the tourists forced by parents and spouses to pose for embarrassing photographs in a spot now known to be meaningless, the NGS surveyors were quick to point out that since Four Corners has been legally recognized by all four states as the intersection of their borders, its current location, though inaccurate, is still legit. As Dave Doyle, chief geodetic surveyor for the NGS, told the Associated Press, “Where the marker is now is accepted… . Even if it’s 10 miles off, once it’s adopted by the states, which it has been, the numerical errors are irrelevant.”
This existential approach to geography might help save the state the trouble of relocating the monument, but it also makes the entire experience seem a bit arbitrary. If any place can become Four Corners, why not just take a picture of your kid squatting on the intersection of a different set of perpendicular lines—like on a sidewalk—and visit Mesa Verde instead?
Daniel Peverini
Chapter 98
Russia’s Prison OE-256/5
Okay, so prison isn’t high on many travelers’ life lists to begin with. But nonetheless, you should take special care never to land yourself in Russi
a’s Prison No. OE-256/5, a hellhole otherwise known as Petak.
Like Alcatraz, Petak is on an island in a beautiful setting—in this case, Russia’s White Lake. But unlike Alcatraz, it’s still open for business. Petak is home to 170 or so of the country’s most dangerous prisoners, and everything about it is designed to break their wills and destroy their spirits.
Prisoners are kept in cramped two-person cells for about twenty-two hours a day. For the rest of the time, they’re allowed to pace back and forth in small outdoor cages—their only form of exercise. Prisoners are allowed two two-hour visits for the first ten years of their sentences. If they misbehave, they’re put into a dark cell, empty except for a bucket and a fold-down bed, for fifteen days. Forget about books or entertainment—parcels are only allowed twice a year and, according to London’s Telegraph, half the population has tuberculosis.
Anyone who tries to escape would either drown or be shot. But then, considering the effect Petak has on people, perhaps that’s not a bad option. “After three or four years their personalities begin to deteriorate,” the prison’s psychologist told the Telegraph reporter. “There is no way anyone can spend twenty-five years in a place like this without being psychologically destroyed.”
Chapter 99
A Bikram Yoga Studio
Walk into a Bikram studio—a branch of yoga that requires the room to be heated to 105 degrees at 40 percent humidity—and you’ll be hit in the face with a steamy cloud of sweat and body odor so powerful that you’ll be tempted to throw up.
Good thing there are sanitation standards for yoga studios, right? Wrong. There are none—a fact I’m reminded of every time I catch a whiff of Funky Door Yoga, a dog-friendly Bikram studio that, as all Bikram studios are required to do, carpeted its floor. That’s bad news for my gag reflex, but it’s great for the hundreds of thousands of bacteria that live in every yoga studio, sharing space on mats and blankets with dust mites, parasites, fungi, and viruses.
According to Philip M. Tierno, PhD, director of clinical microbiology at New York University Langone Medical Center, “Eighty percent of disease is caught by direct or indirect contact—either interacting with a person who carries germs or touching a surface where those organisms live.” So let’s see: you’ve got a moist, warm room populated by sickness-causing organisms that are spread by touch. Why bother with a yoga class? Just head to the hospital and lick some open wounds.
In addition to respiratory infections, things you can get from your downward-facing dog range from skin afflictions like athlete’s foot, ringworm, and plantar warts to staphylococcus, a bacteria carried by more than 30 percent of people that can enter your body through a tiny cut or scratch and, if you’re unlucky enough to get a drug-resistant strain, can kill you.
You can protect yourself by washing your hands, sanitizing your mat, and wearing a long-sleeved shirt, socks, and pants to class (everyone’s outfit of choice when exercising in a rain forest). Or, alternatively, if you want an excuse to stay home from work, do Bikram in your bathing suit—an upsettingly common practice—and spend a few moments after class sloshing around on the floor. Somewhere in the sweat puddles is sure to lurk an organism that can give you a debilitating rash.
Chapter 100
The Traveling Mummies of Guanajuato
I’m not looking forward to death, but when I’m gone, I’d prefer it if my body is not included in a traveling mummy show.
That’s exactly what happened to about 120 people who had the misfortune of being buried in a graveyard at Guanajuato, a town northwest of Mexico City. From 1865 till 1958, a local law required relatives to pay a grave tax for the privilege of keeping their kin underground. If you failed to pay the tax for three years in a row, your loved one would be exhumed, and his or her body—which was likely mummified, thanks to the area’s arid climate—would be put on display in a museum.
I’m not kidding. The town is home to El Museo de las Momias—the Museum of the Mummies—and even though the grave tax law was changed in 1958, the bodies are still on display.
If you have a taste for the macabre, you might enjoy the exhibit. It includes a motley crew of human remains, from a tiny baby mummy who died (along with its mother) during a botched caesarian section to a woman whose raised arms and scratched forehead suggest that she might have been buried alive. Some of the mummies are clothed; some are naked except for their socks. Beyond an occasional name, however, there’s no information as to who they were or how they died.
I fall into the camp of people who think that maybe a traveling mummy show is not the most respectful way to deal with the remains of indigent Mexicans. But others disagree: the mummies are so popular that in the fall of 2009, they were taken to the United States for a seven-city tour.
Chapter 101
The Top of the Stari Grad Bell Tower
By the second week of our honeymoon in Croatia, I knew that my husband, Peter, loved bell towers. Every time we found one, he insisted on climbing to the top so that he could take pictures from its panoramic view. So I wasn’t surprised that when we arrived in Stari Grad—a small town on the island of Hvar—he made a beeline for the campanile.
But this bell tower was different. Unlike most Croatian campaniles, which are either padlocked or charge admission, it was unguarded, unlocked, and entirely covered in scaffolding. I am a cautious person and decided that a centuries-old building held up by a precarious network of wooden beams and metal bars might not be the safest structure to climb. By the time I’d reached that conclusion, however, Peter was already inside.
I entered to find him scampering up a set of steep stone steps, which were coated in a salt-and-pepper-colored layer of pigeon droppings so thick and crunchy that it sounded as if we were stepping on cornflakes. I took a few hesitant steps, asking spoilsport questions like “Do you think this is safe?” and “What if the building collapses?”
Paying no attention, he continued his ascent until the stone staircase turned into several flights of metal stairs. In what had already become a theme in our relationship, I followed and soon found myself on a metal platform at the top of the tower, seven stories above ground. I was also standing directly beneath one of four giant metal bells, all covered in bird droppings and suspended just above head level. Peter, in the meantime, had leaped up onto the thick stone windowsill and was eyeing the wooden scaffolding outside—scaffolding of unknown quality, its age and structural integrity unclear.
“Come up here and take a picture with me,” Peter said, gesturing toward the shaky wooden ledge. “It’s got a great view.”
At that point—the first moment all day—I refused. No, I would not come up on the windowsill. No, I did not want to take a picture. I was staying right here, on this shit-crusted metal floor beneath a huge bell, and if he thought I was going to let him jump onto the wooden scaffolding, subjecting me to the possibility of having to scrape my new husband’s broken body off the concrete plaza below, he had another thing coming. No one was going anywhere.
Then I looked at my watch and noticed the time: 11:59 A.M. Quickly changing my mind, I decided I did, in fact, want to go somewhere—downstairs, to be exact, and fast. Barking a warning to Peter, I made a lunge for the stairs.
But I was too late. Before I reached the first step, I heard a click and a whir and looked up to see the bell directly above my head—six feet in diameter, with a clapper the size of a grapefruit—drop several inches. As the other three bells hung in silence, it shuddered slightly, paused just long enough for me to duck, and then sprang violently to life.
This was no slow, steady church bell. It was a frantic clanging, a call to arms, the sort of ringing you would expect if the town were about to be overrun by an intruding army or a giant tidal wave. I hunched over, hands clamped to my ears, as it rang and rang, sending crusted bits of bird poop cascading down on top of me and shaking the platform beneath my feet. Twenty times? Thirty times? I don’t know how many times it rang; I only know that I was terrified, sending de
sperate prayers for the floor not to collapse. Eventually the bell clicked back into place and I brushed the droppings out of my hair, grateful not to have been knocked unconscious or sent tumbling to my death. As my hearing slowly returned, I became aware of a familiar, happy sound: Peter laughing.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my agent, Rebecca Friedman, my editor, Allison Lorentzen, and the entire team at Harper Paperbacks that brought this book together, including Carrie Kania, Cal Morgan, Jennifer Hart, Stephanie Selah, Catherine Serpico, Michael Barrs, Greg Kubie, Alberto Rojas, and Amy Vreeland. Thanks as well to Sara Remington for her photography, Steven Korovesis for his illustrations, and the Gorlochs—Marcelino Alvarez, David Mikula, Shawn Bernard, and Adam Heathcott—for creating the 101 Worst Places app to expand the book beyond the printed page. I’m extremely grateful to my guest contributors and all the friends and strangers who submitted photographs, stories, and ideas—may your future travels be better than the ones described in this book. To my parents, grandmother, and Betty, thank you for instilling in me my love of travel, and for all the adventures we’ve shared. Lastly, thank you to Peter for your support, advice, and innumerable ideas—and for being the best partner I could ever hope for, in traveling and in life.
Index
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
A
AA meeting, drunk, 117
Action Park, 58–59
Adventure of the Beagle, the Musical, 168–170
Africa, 82, 163–164, 209–210