Tis’ the season for great vacations and while traveling to unique destinations is still a great way to create lasting memories, you might want to rethink your trusted travel agent or friends if they offer up these ideas for you next ideal getaway.
Are there any you would like to add to the list? Leave your comments and ideas !
Buford, Wyoming
Mark Brennan
Formerly sporting a bustling population of two, Buford now only has a single resident. Add that to the fact that it’s located in the middle of Wyoming—the least populated state in the union—and you have one hell of a bad place to vacay.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Steven Guerrisi
The Patch is a basically immobile, gigantic mass of trash out in the middle of the Pacific. Most estimates put its size—composed entirely of plastic bottles, chemical sludge, and basically any other kind of debris you can imagine—larger than the state of Texas. You’d probably rather go to Texas.
Alnwick Poison Garden, England
Richard Clark / Getty Images
The Alnwick Poison Garden is pretty much what you’d think it is: a garden full of plants that can kill you (among many other things). Some of the plants are so dangerous that they have to be kept behind bars. It’s not exactly your typical stroll through a botanical garden.
Ramree Island, Burma
Sean Weekly Photography / Getty Images
Ramree Island may be in the beautiful Burma, but nothing about this place is beautiful. It’s actually just a giant swamp full of thousands of saltwater crocodiles—which are the deadliest in the world—plus mosquitos loaded with malaria, oh, and venomous scorpions. Also, there was a six-week long battle here during WWII, in which only twenty Japanese soliders survived… out of 1000. And most were killed by the wildlife.
The Zone of Alienation, Ukraine
Dragunov1981 / iStockphoto / Getty Images
Although you probably wouldn’t want to vacation in Pripyat either, the Zone of Alienation is the 19-mile decommissioned perimeter surrounding the grounds of the Chernobyl incident. It’s administered by a branch of government specifically so that no-one is allowed into it, but there are a few hundred residents who refused to move. What’s wrong with those people? You probably don’t want to know.
Ilha de Queimada Grande, Brazil
ArevHamb / iStockphoto / Getty Images
Sorry to tell you this, but Ilha de Queimada Grande isn’t a fantastical island getaway. It’s actually an island full of thousands of snakes. Its name literally means, “Snake Island.” It has the highest concentration of snakes in the world, with 1-5 golden lanceheads per square meter—oh, and they’re very poisonous: when designs were drawn up to build a plantation on the island, all the scouts were killed.
St. Helena
Darrin Henry / iStockphoto / Getty Images
If you somehow end up in the same place where Napoleon was imprisoned and spent his final days, things are probably going wrong. Oh yeah, and there’s no functioning airport, either. The only way you can get on or off the island is via container ships from South Africa. Which only come every few months.
Izu Island, Japan
DigitalGlobe / Getty Images
The Izus are a group of volcanic islands located off the southern coast of Japan’s Honshu island. They’re technically part of Tokyo, except because they’re extremely volcanic, the air constantly smells of sulfur and residents have been evacuated twice—in 1953 and 2000—because of “dangerously high levels of gas.” Although allowed back in 2005, inhabitants are now required to carry gas masks on their person at all times.
Mud Volcanoes of Azerbaijan
Wolfgang Kaehler / Getty Images
Sure, mud volcanoes aren’t nearly as dangerous as their cousins of the magmatic variety, but when they do actually erupt, it’s not exactly a pretty sight. In 2001, a new island grew out of the Caspian Sea, due to an increase in volcanic activity—right nearby where hundreds of these bad boys are. Generally, they go off every twenty years, and when they do, they shoot flames “hundreds of meters into the sky” and deposit tons of mud into the immediate area. Try wrestling your way out of that mud.