101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [62]
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.
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
airplane, stranded on runway, 186–187
Alaska, 87–89
Algalita Marine Research Foundation, 101
aliens, 198–199
Amsterdam, 188–189
amusement park(s), dangerous, 58–59
Angel, Criss, 196
animatronic Jesus, 123–125
ants, driver, 163–164
arbitrary lines, 226–227
Argentina, 102–104, 123–125, 168–170
Arizona, 67–68, 224–225, 226–227
ascent tampon(s), 81
Asia, 3–4, 10–11, 14–17, 18–19, 30–33, 49–51, 65–66, 85–86, 113–114, 139, 150–151, 178–179, 205–206, 211–212, 223–224
asshole(s)
being one, 139
Satan’s, 215
asteroids, giant, 213–214
Atacama Desert, 148–149
Australia, 84, 161–162, 171
Austria, 13, 105, 155–156
azaleas, 114
Azerbaijan, 152
B
bad ideas, 29
Baldwin, Michael, 134–136
Banana, the Big, 161–162
barbeque, mangled goat, 28
Barcelona, 39–41
BART, 45–46
bat-shit crazy, people who are, 20–22, 47–48, 95
bathtub(s) filled with beer, 12–13
Beast, the, 76–77
Bec des Rosses, 75
bedroom, your boss’s, 29
beer, bathtub filled with, 12–13
Beijing Museum of Tap Water, 10–11
Beijing, 10–11, 16, 134
bell tower(s), top of, 234–236
Bhutan, 114
Big Brother, 129
Bikram yoga, 230–231
birth canal, spotted hyena 209–210
black holes, as vacation destinations, 118
Black Rock City, 217–219
Blarney Stone, 132–133
Bodrum, Turkey, 120
body farms, xiv, 115–116
bog snorkeling, 202–203
Bolivia, 165–167
Borehole, Kola Superdeep,