Catherine Price (20 page)

T
here’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

O
kay, 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 Russia’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.”

W
alk 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.

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.

B
y 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 desperate 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.

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.