extreme tourism film

Extreme Tourism

Original title: les touristes de l'extrême.

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Travel agencies specialising in perilous holidays are offering organised trips to war zones and even areas struck by natural or nuclear disasters. We follow one group of tourists as they scale the mountains of Hindu-Kush in Afghanistan, climbing 4000m above sea level in order to ski down this one-of-a-kind slope. In Indonesia we see a different kind of extreme tourism, with plucky thrill-seekers invited to climb Anak Krakatoa, an erupting volcano. In Ukraine, adventurous tourists come from all over the globe to visit the dead city of Chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in human history.

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Extreme tourism: ‘If it was safe, that’s not an adventure’

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Tom Robbins , Simon Usborne and Oliver Barnes

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Tomaž Rotar knows a thing or two about life and death in extreme environments. In February 2021, the Slovenian oral surgeon was sitting inside a cramped tent 7,300m up K2, the world’s second highest mountain. More than 20 climbers had gathered in the dark on the snowbound ledge, arriving at the camp in worsening winds and temperatures that were already below -30C. 

To stand a chance of reaching the summit as the weather window they had been chasing began to close, they would have to set off again almost immediately.

Most of the climbers there that night did the sane thing; they sat tight and descended at dawn, many swallowing the fact that they had paid guiding companies at least £20,000 for a chance to reach the summit in winter, a feat that had been achieved for the first time only weeks earlier. Others felt moved to step back into the darkness and attempt what they had flown halfway around the world to do.

Rotar was among seven climbers who made the decision to go on. He only turned back hours later when he came across an unexpected crevasse. Three other climbers managed to get across it, and continued. When they failed to return, a frantic search gripped the world’s media as military helicopters and even a fighter jet scoured K2.

All three men died that night. It would be months before their frozen bodies could be found. As Rotar has followed news updates about the Titan submersible this week with a familiar feeling of dread, he has been reflecting on the calculations wealthy adventurers make when they face that vital decision: do we stay, or do we go?

“It’s the same kind of people who feel the same kind of draw, whether it’s to go deep under the sea, or to climb very high, or to run very far,” he says. “It’s a kind of sickness, like a venom in your veins that makes you want to go. Because you want that beautiful feeling that comes when the danger is over and you know you have achieved something. And then you don’t even know how you lived before that, so you go back and you do it again.”

At the extreme and often prohibitively costly end of the travel industry, a niche has grown to meet demand for variations on that same feeling. From the oceans, to the mountains, to polar ice sheets, to active volcanoes — and now the vast expanse of space — people are increasingly prepared to pay small fortunes in pursuit of big, sometimes dangerous dreams.

Even the South Pole — which, after Scott’s ill-fated visit in 1912, went unvisited by humans until 1956 — is now offered in tourist brochures. The US Amundsen-Scott South Pole station is shadowed by another facility, about half a mile away: a tourist camp that welcomes visitors with a sign announcing “the world’s southernmost resort”. Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions, which runs the camp, offers a range of ways to get there, including the “South Pole Overnight” trip at $65,000 — guests simply fly there and back (and are presented with a certificate on their return).

Interest in visiting Antarctica — the world’s coldest, highest, windiest continent — is surging, with the large majority of people arriving via cruise ships and landing in small boats. The number coming ashore doubled from 26,000 in the 2014/15 austral summer season to reach 55,000 in 2019/20. (Data from the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators also records some of the activities they undertook: the most recent season saw tourists go stand-up paddleboarding 598 times, snorkelling 1,661 times, snowboarding 766 times and making 4,217 dives in submersibles.)

As with other areas of the “extreme tourism” world, tour operators are increasingly blurring the lines between holidays and expeditions. As well as fly-in trips to the South Pole, ALE offers a range of itineraries that casual observers would assume were the preserve of professional explorers. Want to ski from the edge of the continent to the Pole, a 60-day epic, battling temperatures down to -30C? Just head to the ALE website and, if you can manage the $85,000 price tag, click the “book now” button. The trip will be led by an experienced guide (though it’s up to you whether you mention that in your press release and Insta-posts).

Particularly popular is the “ski the last degree” expedition, where guests are dropped by plane 69 miles from the Pole (one degree of latitude), then trek there on skis over about five days, giving those on a tight schedule the flavour of a classic polar crossing. According to IAATO, numbers taking part in the $75,000 trip tripled in the three years to 2019; those interested can head off on December 7 or 14, or January 4 next year.

“We push our clients as far as they want to go, from abseiling to zip lining to getting a taste of what it’s like being a polar explorer,” says Patrick Woodhead, a record-breaking Antarctic adventurer and founder of the luxury Antarctic operator White Desert.

Starting in 2005 with three tents and two clients, White Desert now runs three camps, each for 12 guests, offering cocktails and chef-prepared meals, a yoga pod, sauna and library. Transport options include a Gulfstream private jet (a service that Hamish Harding, one of the five people who died on the Titan submersible, was involved in setting up); clients typically pay around $100,000 per visit. “I think that this kind of travel is exactly what people are looking for,” says Woodhead. “When people come to Antarctica, they are disconnected from their phones . . . they’re in an otherworldly situation and environment and that very much changes people.”

Though tourism is growing more normal in Antarctica, risks remain. The US Coast Guard is currently carrying out an investigation after four cruise-ship tourists were killed in three incidents at the end of 2022. Two died after an inflatable boat capsized, one when a “rogue wave” hit the ship, and another fell and hit his head in rough waters.

Yet one of the odd things about extreme tourism is that risk seems to attract rather than deter customers. Just two days after a volcano erupted on White Island off New Zealand in 2019, killing 22 people, a boat guide in Whakatāne, the town closest to the volcano, told reporters that he had begun receiving new inquiries from tourists who wanted to go there. One woman wanted to see White Island close up “to feel the fury”.

“It’s the same kind of thing that the Romantic poets talk about when they talk about the sublime in nature, the spectacles that take us out of ourselves and transcend the day-to-day human experience,” says Amy Donovan, a geographer and volcanologist at Cambridge university who has watched demand grow ever higher for proximity to spewing ash and lava. When Fagradalsfjall erupted in Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula in March 2021, more than 350,000 people flocked to the site over the following 10 months.

After two people died in the Clipper Round The World yacht race in 2015/16, applications increased. When the celebrated US extreme skier Doug Coombs was killed in 2006 in an accident in La Grave, France, an event reported at the time as “like Superman dying”, guides noticed an uptick in inquiries from American tourists wanting to ski there.

Disaster also sells in the Himalayas. The deadly 2021 winter season on K2 — which claimed the lives of two climbers in falls, as well as the three who were lost near the summit — only increased demand for attempts on a mountain that is far more dangerous than Everest. Last summer, about 200 people reached the summit of K2, more than triple the previous record.

“People want to climb Everest because it’s dangerous and involves risk,” says Lukas Furtenbach, an Austrian mountain guide specialising in premium expeditions to Mount Everest (his packages cost up to $217,000, including personalised, professional-level video and photography). “If nobody died and it was 100 per cent safe, that’s not an adventure and I think demand would decrease.”

This year’s Everest season saw a record number of climbers — and a record number of deaths, 17. Furtenbach, whose clients all safely reached the summit, is increasingly concerned about what is happening when money, ego and the human urge to seek thrills collide in dangerous places. “I would say 14 of these deaths could have been avoided with very simple safety protocols,” he says. “Four of them were clients who went missing on summit day. Other people ran out of oxygen. These things should be impossible, and it’s happening because operators are not regulated.”

Not all extreme travel involves physical exertion. Woodhead, the White Desert founder, is this weekend in Equatorial Guinea, speaking at the inaugural “Most Traveled People” conference. The event caters to “competitive travellers”, a rapidly expanding group who attempt to visit as many places as possible on Earth, logging their visits online to climb up the league tables. Having decided the 193-long list of UN-recognised countries was too easy to complete, enthusiasts have divided the world further — MTP’s list now runs to 1,500 countries, regions, territories, dependencies, island groups and so on. (Currently top of the leaderboard is Harry Mitsidis, 51, who has reached 1,362 of them).

MTP is not alone. Since 2009, the Extreme Traveler International Congress has run meetups for tourists wanting to go beyond the brochures. Venues have included Baghdad, Mogadishu and Rockall, a granite islet in the north Atlantic.

“I think there’s a growing awareness that it’s possible to get to these kind of places,” says James Willcox, whose company Untamed Borders offers trips to destinations including Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen and has organised events for ETIC. “Previously, if a destination wasn’t in the Thomas Cook brochure and there wasn’t a Lonely Planet guidebook, people just had zero information. Now it is fairly easy to find out about anywhere online, and social media has this normalising effect — once you start looking, you see that other people are going, however unlikely the destination.”

Virgin Galactic is due to launch its first commercial space flight next week. Already 800 people have bought tickets, which now cost $450,000

The drive to tick boxes and complete defined challenges runs through much extreme travel. As reaching the “seven summits” (the highest mountain on each continent) has become common, adventurers have strived for the “explorer’s grand slam” (the seven summits plus North and South Pole), or even the “explorer’s extreme trifecta” (the highest and lowest places on Earth, Everest and Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, as well as space). A new generation is now rushing to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks, often using extensive helicopter support to do so. Critics have pointed out that the approach creates a small number of “honeypot” objectives, while ignoring less well-trodden paths.

The wider phenomenon of buying adventure has long precedents, says Leo Houlding , a professional climber with a string of groundbreaking expeditions to his name. “Since the beginning of exploration, wealthy people have patronised and paid to join expeditions,” he says. “In the so-called golden age of European alpinism, the peaks were being climbed by rich Britons using hired local guides — some were probably good climbers, others were probably paying to go so they could dine out on it.” Nevertheless, the trend has “exploded” in the past decade, he says.

Space offers the lure of a new frontier. Virgin Galactic is due to launch its first commercial space flight next week — a two-hour experience that will reach about 55 miles above the Earth’s surface. Already 800 people have bought tickets, which now cost $450,000. Meanwhile, the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin rocket reaches 62 miles in a flight of just 11 minutes; since its first crewed flight in 2021, passengers have included the Star Trek actor William Shatner, the undersea explorer Victor Vescovo and Hamish Harding.

A more leisurely option is Space Perspective, an eight-person capsule that will be carried to about 19 miles (the stratosphere, rather than space) beneath a balloon. Guests are promised “No rockets. No g-force” but rather a gentle “meticulously crafted” six-hour flight “complete with a meal and cocktails”. The company hopes to launch late next year, tickets are already on sale at $125,000 per head.

Many of the operators are developing tourism and commercial space travel in tandem, and extreme travel increasingly cleaves close to science and conservation. Whereas White Desert’s Woodhead started his company by hitching a lift on a Russian cargo plane taking scientists to Antarctica, he says his planes now deliver about 250 scientists to the continent each year, the same number as his high-paying tourists. Original Travel is currently offering a £52,000-per-person trip to Botswana in which tourists will help with the release of a dozen relocated rhinos.

Jimmy Carroll of tour operator Pelorus recently organised a trip for a wealthy family that involved chartering a yacht with an on-board helicopter to Antarctica. At the client’s request, Carroll organised the charter of a second yacht, with a second helicopter, to accommodate a team of research scientists who would also teach the client’s 12-year-old daughter.

Pelorus offers access to submersibles too, of the sort that have become de rigueur aboard expedition superyachts — the increasingly in-demand vessels designed to access the harshest seas without sacrificing comfort. Some of Carroll’s clients recently chartered U Boat Navigator, a 24m yacht which sleeps six and is equipped with two submersibles. Both are built by Triton, whose underwater vehicles, which cost up to $40mn, have been used to film the BBC Blue Planet series. The Florida company was given a boost last year when it welcomed two new investors: the billionaire American hedge fund manager Ray Dalio and James Cameron, the Titanic movie director and submariner.

“People are intrigued by the fact that 70 per cent of the world is covered by water and we have seen very little of it,” Carroll says. “And I think the likes of David Attenborough ’s programmes have definitely helped spark imaginations.”

Perhaps the most extreme tourist of all splashed back down to Earth last month after an eight-day visit to the International Space Station. John Shoffner, 67, former chief executive of the fibre-optic cable company Dura-Line, was one of three astronauts who had bought places on Axiom’s second trip to space; the company hasn’t said how much they paid but previously reported ticket prices of $55mn. Like many adventurers, Shoffner has form across multiple disciplines: he takes part in 24-hour car races at Germany’s Nürburgring, skydives and BASE-jumps and has raced across America by bike without support.

Why does he do these things? “Well, they’re fun,” he says . “They help you find your edge — I would say your limit, but you don’t really want to find the limit.”

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Risking death at the ends of the earth costs us all / From Chris Hunter, Farnham, Surrey, UK

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• Even After the ‘Titan’ Submarine Disaster, Demand for Extreme Travel Has Never Been Higher

The tragedy threatened to derail one of the tourism industry's fastest growing sectors. Instead, experts say demand has never been higher.

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Scaling the highest peaks, diving to the depths of the ocean, taking a flight to space—these trips are not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, so-called “extreme tourism” is booming.

“During the pandemic, people were sitting at home, examining their lives, which created a pent-up demand for making travel a priority,” says Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) President Shannon Stowell. “Now, adventure travel is exploding. The concept of small group travel in remote locations is way more appealing, compared to visiting over-touristed locations.”

“It hit the core for so many people, in terms of fascination and anxiety about the risks that people are willing to take to experience something so extreme, “says Matt Berna, Intrepid Travel president for the Americas. “We were hoping for the best result, which didn’t come. Innately, that’s going to ripple through our industry. It has shed light on the fact that there’s a lot that goes into running a qualified, highly safe, inspected and reputable trip.”

Remarkably, mere months on, experts says that the OceanGate disaster hasn’t put off travelers who were already eager to push their limits—especially wealthy travelers who have the means and time to accumulate unique experiences that come with bragging rights.

In 2021, the global adventure tourism market was valued at $282.1 billion, according to a report by Grand View Research. It’s now projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15.2 percent from 2022 to 2030, with the hard adventure segment representing a significant revenue share of more than 20 percent. This is credited to a gradual increase in the number of travelers that are willing to take high-risk activities and are open to adventures.

“A little bit of risk is good because it makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something,” says Massimo Prioreschi, president and CEO of Mt. Sobek, an adventure tour operator offering trips such as polar region adventure cruises. He says he’s personally seen an uptick in year-over-year bookings. “But the more extreme the activity, the higher the chance of death. It’s good to know what you’re getting into—and the tour company should qualify you, as well.”

Tim Tuiqali, guest experiences manager at VOMO, adds that “no line has been drawn between adventure sports and the Titan implosion.”

“It hasn’t affected our business,” he says. “We are actually seeing a steady increase in interest. At a luxury level, we understand that safety is paramount. Our guests put a lot of trust in us. We’ve been offering the shark dives for more than 15 years and haven’t had any incidents.”

Lifelong explorer Milbry Polk, co-author of “Women of Discovery,” emphasizes that travelers need to choose companies that have very good track records.

Others even argue that would be adventurers should not be put off by the Titan catastrophe. While OceanGate did blur the lines between scientific expedition and tourist attraction for the uber-wealthy, the research being generated was genuine and in the true spirit of exploration. Their goal was to research the ecosystem of the deep North Atlantic Ocean, and to gain a better understanding of how and why some communities of organisms develop in geographic isolation, while others range broadly across the ocean floor.

In the Wall Street Journal , Explorer’s Club President Richard Garriott de Cayeux wrote, “Harding and Nargeolet [Titan crew members[ were individuals who relentlessly pushed boundaries for the betterment of science. Critics may label their expedition as ‘extreme tourism,’ and perhaps it was, but it was their spirit of exploration that propelled them to seek, experience and learn…we will not stop exploring.”

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Extreme Tourism: Disaster areas, adventures and war zones

Explore the thrilling world of extreme tourism in this eye-opening documentary that takes you to the world's most dangerous places.

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Keywords : *Extreme tourism, war zones, disaster areas, adrenaline, danger, exploration, adventure travel, thrill-seeking, human resilience, global issues, Laetitia Kretz. Three words: Adventurous, Eye-opening, Thrilling

Introduction

"Extreme Tourism", directed by Laetitia Kretz and released in 2019, explores an emerging trend in global travel. The documentary follows a new breed of tourists who are finding adventure not in safe and popular travel destinations, but in the world's most dangerous places - from war zones to disaster-stricken areas.

"Extreme Tourism" features a variety of thrill-seeking travelers who are choosing to explore dangerous locations around the world. From war-torn countries to regions devastated by natural disasters, these fearless individuals are undeterred by risks and challenges. Through their unique journeys, the documentary exposes the realities of these places and the resilience of their inhabitants.

More Film Analysis

  "Extreme Tourism" delves into the motivation behind these daring trips, examining the allure of danger and the human desire for thrill and novelty. It also critically assesses the ethical implications of such tourism.

  The film provides a historical and factual context for each location visited, offering a deeper understanding of their current situations and the dangers they present.

Key themes in the film

• Adventure and thrill-seeking
• Human resilience
• Ethical tourism
• Global understanding

Film Comparisons

"Extreme Tourism" can be compared to documentaries like "Dark Tourist", which also explore the fascination with dangerous and morbid travel destinations.

Noteworthy Moments

One significant moment in the documentary is when a tourist enters an active war zone, highlighting the extreme lengths some will go to for adventure.

"Extreme Tourism" has been praised for its daring exploration of a lesser-known side of travel, with viewers commending its thought-provoking and eye-opening content.

"Extreme Tourism" is an intriguing documentary that explores the boundaries of adventure and risk. It offers a unique perspective on our world and is recommended for those interested in travel, human nature, and global issues.

More film information:

Film summary.

• Genre: Documentary

PERSONALITIES

• Laetitia Kretz: The director of the documentary who explores extreme tourism.
• War zones: Areas where active military conflict is taking place.
• Disaster areas: Regions affected by natural disasters.

Key Questions Raised by the Film:

• What motivates people to venture into dangerous places?
• What are the ethical implications of extreme tourism?
• How does visiting these places impact the tourists and locals?

Links for Further Exploration:

• Ethical Tourism
• The Dark Side of Adventure Tourism

I wonder what the film would be in another art form

• If this film was a famous book, it would be "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer for its exploration of risk-taking in extreme conditions.
• If this film was a famous song, it would be "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor for its theme of resilience.
• If this film was a famous piece of art, it would be "The Scream" by Edvard Munch, symbolising the thrill and fear associated with extreme tourism.
• If this film was a famous celebrity, it would be Bear Grylls, known for his survival skills and daring adventures.
• If this film was a color, it would be red, symbolising danger and adventure.
• If this film was a music style, it would be heavy metal for its intensity and adrenaline-pumping effect.

Watch the documentary on iWonder:

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Extreme tourism, les touristes de l'extrême.

Directed by Laetitia Kretz

Travel agencies specialising in perilous holidays are offering organised trips to war zones and even areas struck by natural or nuclear disasters. We follow one group of tourists as they scale the mountains of Hindu-Kush in Afghanistan, climbing 4000m above sea level in order to ski down this one-of-a-kind slope. In Indonesia we see a different kind of extreme tourism, with plucky thrill-seekers invited to climb Anak Krakatoa, an erupting volcano. In Ukraine, adventurous tourists come from all over the globe to visit the dead city of Chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in human history.

Director Director

Laetitia Kretz

Alternative Title

Τουρισμός στα άκρα

Documentary

Releases by Date

15 sep 2019, releases by country.

60 mins   More at TMDb Report this page

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The 10 Best Documentaries About Tourism

Feb 5, 2024 | Best Of , Travel

With its stunning visuals and captivating stories, there’s no better way to explore the world than through documentaries about tourism. From exploring off-the-beaten-track locations to uncovering unique cultures and customs, these documentaries can give viewers an intimate glimpse into a variety of destinations around the globe. This article delves into some of the best documentaries about tourism available today, offering viewers an unforgettable journey of discovery. From the remote depths of Madagascar to the vibrant cityscapes of South America, these films will take you on a fascinating look into different corners of the world and introduce you to amazing people and places. So buckle up and get ready for an enlightening experience with some truly remarkable documentaries about tourism!

1. Extreme Tourism

A documentary about extreme tourism, is an insightful look into the fascinating world of daredevil travel. The film follows adventurers as they journey to remote and often dangerous locations in search of that ultimate adrenaline rush. From scaling steep mountains and swimming through treacherous waters to skydiving off towering cliffs, this documentary will capture the spirit of those who take on some of the world’s most daring activities.

2. Welcome to Bangkok, Thailand, Tourism

Traveling to Bangkok is an exciting and rewarding experience. For transportation, visitors have the option of taking motorized rickshaws, taxis, subways or the sky train – all of which offer quick access to many of the city’s most popular attractions. Or explore unique waterways like the Chao Phraya River with express boats, long-tail boats and vessels that traverse the city’s canals.When you’re looking for a respite from it all, hop on an express boat and head to Ko Samet in the Gulf of Thailand – essentially Bangkok’s version of Wannsee Lake in Berlin. You can book a river cruise or visit one of the trendy open-air bars quietly tucked away in high-rise buildings.

3. Journey Through Israel

Israel is a place of contrasts, full of surprises and unexpected beauty. From the bustling cityscapes to the stunning landscapes of the Negev Desert, there’s something here for every traveler. As you explore this vibrant country, you can experience its rich history and culture firsthand. Enjoy authentic local cuisine or relax in the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. Take a hike through the lush green hills of Galilee or explore ancient ruins. With its mix of religious sites and places of natural beauty, Israel is a unique destination filled with adventure and discovery. Whether you’re looking for a relaxing escape or an immersive cultural experience, there’s something here for everyone to enjoy. Visit Israel today and uncover its hidden treasures!

4. Thailand and the fallout from mass tourism

Ever since its emergence as a tourist hotspot, Thailand has been an exotic destination for travelers all over the world. Boasting beautiful beaches, stunning temples and delicious food, it is easy to understand why tourists flock there year after year. However, this constant influx of tourists has its drawbacks as well; overcrowded beaches, polluted water and a damaging effect on local cultures are just some of the problems that can arise from mass tourism. This documentary takes a deep dive into Thailand and investigates the long-term consequences of this type of tourism.

5. Traveling to the “Worst” Country in Europe

Traveling to the most overlooked country in Europe is a unique and rewarding experience, particularly for those who are looking for something that’s off-the-beaten path. One such place is the nation of  located in the far north corner of the continent.This small landlocked country has so much to offer its visitors, from stunning natural landscapes and breathtaking architecture to a vibrant cultural and historical heritage. The locals are friendly and welcoming, giving you an opportunity to get off the beaten path and explore something unique.

6. Traveling Tunisia – Mediterranean journey

Take a journey to Tunisia, an exotic Mediterranean destination with a rich and varied history. This is the perfect way to explore this beautiful country. From the bustling cities of Tunis and Sousse to more rural areas such as Kairouan and Bizerte, you can experience it all with it. Join us as we travel through this land of desert, sea, and sunshine and discover its vibrant culture, delicious cuisine, stunning landscapes, and diverse wildlife. From the ancient ruins of Carthage to the beautiful beaches of Sousse, take in Tunisia’s past while exploring its present. Let it be your guide as you experience this magical country! We will give you a unique insight into its fascinating culture, offering a variety.

7. Egypt Food Tour!!

Take a journey through the beautiful and captivating country of Egypt with a unique food tour. Learn about traditional cuisine and experience the culture firsthand. Indulge in delicious homemade dishes created by local chefs while exploring ancient architecture, discovering hidden gems, and visiting historical sites. Hear stories of resilience and strength from locals who have overcome difficult times throughout history. Feel inspired by the spirit of the people and be in awe of their incredible hospitality. Whether you take a full-day tour or an overnight excursion, you’ll be sure to have a memorable experience that will stay with you for years to come. So if you’re looking for an unforgettable adventure, then book your Egyptian food tour today!

8. Mediterranean journey

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Inside the World’s Rarest Experiences: Why the Rich Love Extreme Tourism

O n June 18, 2023, the submersible Titan lost contact with the outside world as it approached the wreckage of the Titanic 13,000 feet below sea level at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

Among the five people on board were ultra-rich extreme tourists who paid $250,000 each to cram into the makeshift sub and descend into the abyss.

Four days later, on June 22, an international search was called off when officials determined that Titan had imploded, killing all aboard.

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The next day, on June 23, Business Insider reported that it was unlikely that the tragedy would deter the world’s wealthy elite from paying top dollar to risk their lives for the sake of so-called “extreme tourism” — high-end, hardcore adventure travel that requires money most people will never have for experiences that most people would never want.

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The lifting of pandemic-era restrictions triggered an avalanche of cash into the extreme tourism realm as the rich lined up to part with small fortunes to experience the last remaining (mostly) unseen, untouched corners of the world and beyond.

Grand View Research reports that the extreme tourism industry was worth $322 billion in 2022 but is on pace to top $1 trillion in 2030.

Much of the enthusiasm comes from COVID itself.

Like everyone else, the rich watched helplessly as friends and loved ones died from humdrum daily tasks like trips to the grocery store or visits to the doctor’s office. Gone forever, their fortunes unspent, many rich survivors vowed to live their lives to the fullest, even if it killed them.

“More and more wealthy travelers are diving into extreme tourism because they understand how fleeting life can be,” said Frank Spitzer, CEO at Pelecanus , a luxury travel operator that specializes in upscale vacation packages in Colombia. “This mindset of embracing life’s unpredictability is pushing them to seek out thrilling adventures and extravagant getaways before change is ahead. Also, they can easily afford these extravagant expeditions, so why not?”

So, what, exactly, are these ‘extravagant expeditions’ and how much do they cost?

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The Titanic wreckage sits roughly 2.5 miles below the surface of the ocean. That’s just a short stroll compared to the journey that space tourists take when they travel up and away from Earth’s oceans to a different kind of abyss.

Axiom Space is a privately funded space infrastructure corporation that flies missions to the International Space Station and its own Axiom Station. It offers so-called “private astronauts” the chance to visit space and view their home planet from the emptiness of the final frontier. 

The company states, “Missions with Axiom include 17 weeks of expert training at space agency facilities that only a privileged few get to see. Training prepares the participant as an astronaut, develops a deep camaraderie with fellow astronauts and truly inaugurates one as a member of the exclusive space traveler family.”

Understandably, none of that comes cheap. Axiom Space doesn’t disclose the per-person cost of its private astronaut program, but Space.com estimates each seat sells for roughly $55 million.

Jet-Setting, Redefined

Some people would rather see the world than float above it — and they might not have eight figures to plunk down even if they did. For them, extreme tourism involves cramming as many experiences in as short a time with as much luxury as humanly possible.

Companies like Abercrombie & Kent organize mind-boggling global private jet tours like Around the World with Geoffrey Kent. It costs $185,000 per person — but think of what you get for the money.

The excursion takes place over 26 days, and in less than a month, the rich will receive insider access to local spots that regular tourists can’t visit in Japan, India, Malta, Senegal, Saint Helena, Uruguay, Easter Island and French Polynesia.

Their tour bus is a chartered Boeing 747 with full lie-down first-class seating, a dedicated staff and a chef. Wherever the passengers go, a valet, concierge, guide and luggage handler follow.

They probably won’t risk their lives, but they will experience the most extreme and expensive globe-trotting that money can buy.

Pursuing Extreme Animals and Environments

Another mainstay of extreme tourism is, naturally, the pursuit of the extreme — extreme wildlife, extreme environments, extreme weather, etc.

For example, Abercrombie & Kent — just one of several ultra-luxe extreme travel providers — offers the following packages that allow the rich to pursue the planet’s wildest side in style:

• North Pole Expedition Cruise: From $47,995 per person
• Arctic Cruise Adventure — In Search of Polar Bears: From $20,495 per person
• Kenya and Tanzania Wildlife Safari: From $11,995 per person
• Climb Kilimanjaro — Summiting the Machame Route: From $8,495 per person
• The Great Migration Safari in Style: From $19,795
• Galapagos Wildlife Adventure: From $11,495 per person
• Patagonia, the Last Wilderness: From $11,495 per person

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : Inside the World’s Rarest Experiences: Why the Rich Love Extreme Tourism

Extreme Tourism

Travel agencies specialising in perilous holidays are offering organised trips to war zones and even areas struck by natural or nuclear disasters. We follow one group of tourists as they scale the mountains of Hindu-Kush in Afghanistan, climbing 4000m above sea level in order to ski down this one-of-a-kind slope. In Indonesia we see a different kind of extreme tourism, with plucky thrill-seekers invited to climb Anak Krakatoa, an erupting volcano. In Ukraine, adventurous tourists come from all over the globe to visit the dead city of Chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in human history.

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Extreme Tourism Is a Booming Industry for the Rich, But Is It Ethical?

By Bethanie Hestermann

In June, the world was gripped by the disappearance of a deep-sea submersible that was taking paying customers—essentially, tourists—more than 2 miles deep into the ocean to visit the Titanic wreck site. The customers aboard the OceanGate vessel Titan were seeking the adventure of a lifetime, and they had paid handsomely for it. 

What the passengers got instead was a real-life version of the terrors outlined in the waiver they’d signed before stepping foot on the submarine. After a frantic five-day search, the U.S. Coast Guard determined that the Titan had in fact imploded, killing everyone on board. The vessel couldn’t stand up to the pressures of the deep.

The debacle raises questions about this type of extreme tourism—the kind in which ordinary people (often ordinary rich people) do extraordinary things, like summiting Everest, going up into space, and diving into the deep sea. Is this ethical? Is it fair? Is it reckless?

Outdoors.com sought perspectives from three people who have interest in and experience with these areas of extreme tourism: high-altitude trekking and mountaineering, space flight, and deep-sea dives. Here’s what they had to say.

Everest, A Playground for the Rich

It was a deadly spring climbing season on Mount Everest, which boasts the highest peak on Planet Earth. Reports suggest 17 people have died on these icy slopes in 2023. Already a sort of frozen graveyard, where doomed mountaineers like “Sleeping Beauty” and “Green Boots” serve as trail markers and somber warnings to those who shuffle past, Everest is certainly not for most. 

In recent years, though, it’s become more accessible to anyone who fancies themselves worthy of this hallowed peak—as long as they can pay the price, which can, in some cases, exceed $100,000. Nepal’s government issued a record number of permits in 2023 to people keen to summit. Is this exclusive adventure becoming a bit too accessible? 

Gelje Sherpa knows a thing or two about Everest and high-altitude trekking. He was the sherpa who, in May , helped rescue a Malaysian climber from Mount Everest’s “death zone.” Since he began his high-altitude career in 2017, 30-year-old Gelje has summited 13 of the 8,000-meter peaks and remains the youngest person to summit K2 in winter. He’s also led more than 25 successful expeditions to 8,000-meter peaks, including Everest, and he’s participated in more than 50 rescues across several peaks and trekking expeditions. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Gelje Sherpa (@gelje_sherpa_)

Gelje makes his living guiding gung-ho climbers to the highest places in the world, but he’s also seen how humbling these expeditions can be, even to those who arrive prepared. So what does he think about Everest’s growing popularity and accessibility?

“The world of high-altitude mountaineering has exploded in the past years, and as [a] guide I have seen firsthand the impacts this has had,” Gelje said in an interview with Outdoors.com . “More and more people are embracing this concept of ‘nothing is impossible,’ mostly because of documentaries that have been released. This, to some people, means turning up to an 8,000-meter peak with no training and no idea of the skills involved. This is deadly. More and more people are involved in accidents because they just don’t know how to look after themselves.”

He suggests that not every person with deep pockets should be able to show up and get a permit to climb Everest—that’s a recipe for disaster. If the number of permits continues to increase every year, it’s possible the number of deaths will increase, too (although, it’s worth noting that most people blame climate change for the high death toll this year).  

Another problem is that as demand increases, companies raise their prices, essentially making the trek too expensive for many who are qualified to attempt the climb.

“[The] way it’s looking, yes, it’s just becoming a playground for the rich,” Gelje said. “Everest for sure is getting more and more expensive each year and limiting to people who have had this dream to climb it but could never afford it. [. . .] It’s a huge shame because Everest is such a stunning mountain to climb, but it’s just too overcrowded now, it takes away the beauty of it all.” 

“We also have to control how we move forward, potentially being more selective with clients who can receive a permit to climb an 8,000-meter peak,” he added. “This could mean making sure they have already summited a 6,000er before or [passing] a basic test to see their knowledge, et cetera.”

Another way to keep the danger factor in check, Gelje said, would be to limit permits. He doesn’t think this solution would go over very well, though.

“I think the only way to do it is by restricting permits to people who have the proper experience before coming to an 8,000er,” he explained. “However, this is highly unlikely, as it would probably half the number of people coming to Everest, and both the companies and the government would probably not back that idea.”

Gelje believes it’s also important to keep the sport open to newcomers who deserve the opportunity to try to make their dreams come true. In fact, asked whether “ordinary” people should be climbing Everest, Gelje is all for it, as long as they have the right experience. 

“Adri, my climbing partner, was an ‘ordinary’ person five years ago, but she trained hard and it was obvious, and now she is a mountaineer,” Gelje said.

Gelje and Adriana Brownlee “Adri” own AGA Adventures , and they help people grow in the mountaineering space and prepare for their dream quests, whether that’s trekking Annapurna Circuit or climbing Everest itself. Between the two of them, Adri and Gelje have three Guinness World Records, 30+ 8,000-meter peak summits, and 40+ mountaineering expeditions under their belts.

Space, the Final Frontier, Conquered?

Earlier this summer, a Blue Origin rocket engine exploded during testing at a facility in Texas—a harsh reminder that spaceflight is a dangerous undertaking. Blue Origin is Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos’s private space company that has successfully taken paying customers up into space aboard the New Shepard rocket, which is named after American astronaut Alan Shepard. 

Dylan Taylor was aboard the New Shepard on December 11, 2021, when he became one of the relatively few humans who have traveled to space—and one of even fewer humans to have traveled to space as a commercial astronaut. 

Taylor is a business leader and philanthropist. He is the chairman and CEO of Voyager Space and founder of the nonprofit Space for Humanity . As a cherry on top, he’s also one of the very few who have descended into the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench—the deepest known place on Earth. 

As an extreme tourist himself, Taylor is a believer in democratizing the world’s most exclusive adventures. 

“I’m in the camp that says space is the next big thing for humanity, that it’s sort of the blank canvas that we have the ability to sort of reimagine what’s possible, treat each other better, have a better civilization, those kinds of concepts,” he said in an exclusive interview with Outdoors.com . 

For Taylor, going to space was nothing short of life-changing.

“It is a very profound and transformative experience to see the earth from space, [and] it is very apparent when you’re up there that this is really a miracle that we have here on Earth,” he explained. “The rest of the universe is not like this. So far as we know, it’s cold and dark and hostile, and we have this sort of amazing, beautiful paradise here on Earth that sometimes I think we take for granted. It is very apparent when you’re up there how fragile the ecosystem is.”

Taylor paid a lot of money for this experience (he couldn’t share just how much, because he signed an NDA saying he wouldn’t), but he wants more people to be able to experience what he experienced, and this is something Space for Humanity is actively doing. He believes those who go to space come back with a new perspective on Planet Earth—and a renewed drive to protect it.

“There’s this notion that going to space has this transformative power—the overview effect, if you will—and that’s really a gift that should be shared widely,” Taylor said. “It shouldn’t be just professional astronauts or very wealthy people that benefit from that.” 

Space for Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut program fields thousands of applications each year from people who want to become citizen astronauts. They apply in part by outlining how their trip will empower them to be a force for good here on Earth. The program sponsors a new citizen astronaut each year, with the caveat that he or she will work on the projects or initiatives outlined in his or her application upon return.

While Space for Humanity is working to democratize space travel, for the most part, it’s still the realm of billionaires. Is space travel, then, becoming a prestigious feather in a very rich person’s cap?

“I think people have different motivations,” Taylor said. “Some, I think, are legitimately trying to check boxes and go down the list of all the different things you can do. Other people are just, like, in my case, just being super passionate about a lifelong dream.”

“But I think that desire to look [at] what’s over the hill and explore and do things that are unique and challenging, I think that’s sort of been embedded in humanity since the beginning of time.”

While humans’ desire to explore and push themselves to the limits is not new, the technology to take them to new heights—or depths—is relatively new, and, as OceanGate recently proved, technology can fail. Asked whether it’s reckless to take regular people to space, Taylor says no.

“I think it’s risky, and it’s really important that people who do those trips really understand the risks involved,” he explained. “But I don’t think it’s reckless.”

“I think it’s risky . . . but I don’t think it’s reckless.” Dylan Taylor

In the case of space, Taylor says regulations have kept it a tier or more above, say, OceanGate, but for-profit companies in this realm, in his view, should be investing profits back into making these extreme journeys safer and more accessible.

“Are there operators who are taking undue risk for monetary gain? I’ll leave that to others to decide, [but] in the case of space flight, it’s very tightly regulated, so it’s pretty difficult to do a money grab without crossing some boundaries that regulators would not allow you to,” he explained. 

“But I think a lot of these experiences are for-profit, [and] as long as those profits are reinvested back into perfecting the technology and making it more accessible, that’s probably a good thing. I think where it’s not a good thing is if people take undue risks for financial benefit and they don’t disclose what those risks are,” Taylor added. “I think that’s where it crosses the line in my view.”

Into the Abyss

Whether you book a ticket to space, participate in extreme sports like skydiving or big-wave surfing , hike in a national park, or drive to the grocery store down the street, safety is never guaranteed. However, when talking about the extremes of high-altitude climbs, being rocketed into space, and descending to the depths of the ocean, danger is more front and center in the conversation because a lot can go wrong, and, if it does, help may not be available. 

For the passengers of OceanGate’s Titan this past June, the chance to see the Titanic with their own eyes was worth the expense and the risk. If the demand is there, can we fault the companies that deliver the supply to meet the demand? Is an occasional disaster just part of human exploration?

Joe Dituri is a deep-sea diver who spent 28 years in the Navy, serving part of that time as a Navy Diving Saturation Officer. He also has a PhD in biomedical engineering and is known as “Dr. Deep Sea.” In June, Dr. Dituri surfaced after a 100-day jaunt living underwater. Dituri was his own test subject in Project NEPTUNE, in which he lived in the Jules’ Undersea Lodge, an underwater habitat in Key Largo, Florida, for 100 days straight, conducting daily experiments in human physiology.

Dituri is a huge proponent of pushing the envelope for human exploration. 

“My personal investment in this whole thing stems around the advancement of the human race,” he said in a video call with Outdoors.com from his Undersea Oxygen Clinic in Tampa, Florida. “So, we are advancing humans, we’re going down the road to that next thing that we’re doing. Once we solve this, we cure that. Once we do this, what’s left? Exploration of our galaxy, exploration of other galaxies. Exploration of all the world, right, to find everything that there is to be found. It’s the whole Star Trek thing. It’s to ‘boldly go where no man has gone before.’ But what is this about? It really is about exploration. It’s the only thing that will be left in the end.”

Dituri has traveled nearly 2,000 feet deep in the ocean, but not as a tourist. It was part of his training as a deep-sea emergency rescue unit in the U.S. military. Even still, he says democratizing adventure and exploration is critical, and it’s only reckless if participants aren’t trained and prepared.

“It is important to push the boundaries; nay, it is required to push the boundaries. We go boldly. This is what we do. This is, as a society, what we need to do,” Dituri said. “But, we need to perform risk mitigation. [. . .] When I jump out of an airplane, I have two parachutes on my back. It’s not just one. I always have a backup, and I’m well trained in what could go wrong. So . . . that’s the overall goal. You mitigate the risk down to an acceptable level, with training and education, and that’s what we’re looking to do. That’s the only way to pursue and go forward and basically make meaningful contributions.”

“When I jump out of an airplane, I have two parachutes on my back. It’s not just one. I always have a backup, and I’m well trained in what could go wrong.” – Joe Dituri, Dr. Deep Sea

Therefore, Dituri does not see the democratization of deep-sea exploration as a money grab. 

“The quote from President Kennedy comes up,” he added. “ We choose to do these things. We choose to go to the moon and these other things in this century. Not because they’re easy, but because they’re hard .” 

“This is the whole spirit of exploration,” Dituri concludes. “We need to gain and gather that knowledge and information . . . so that we can give it to the rest of humanity.”

If viewed through a glass-half-full lens, then, every implosion and explosion equates to some massive lessons learned—it’s one small step for man, one giant leap for humankind , so to speak. Not all extreme adventures that end badly offer up some consolation prize of knowledge or experience, though. Some just rip away a person’s life. Whether that person signed a waiver, handed over a fat check, or simply lived for the thrill, it nonetheless begs the question: Is there such a thing as an adventure too extreme, or are today’s most extreme adventures the proving ground for the next era in human exploration?

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Chernobyl diaries: film review.

"Paranormal Activity" creator Oren Peli cowrote the horror film focusing on friends exploring the site of the famous nuclear reactor disaster.

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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Chernobyl Diaries Film Still - H 2012

A basic monster movie that benefits greatly from its unique setting, Chernobyl Diaries again demonstrates Oren Peli ’s ability to wrest scares with minimal production values and a clever premise. The wunderkind behind Paranormal Activity came up with the story for this effort, which he also produced and co-scripted. While unlikely to match that franchise’s unworldly success—barring a “Fukushima Diaries,” there seems little prospect for a sequel—this low-budget horror film provides a reasonable quotient of scares.  

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The film concerns six twentysomethings who impulsively decide to forego their planned trip to Moscow to partake in some extreme tourism. Led by their guide Uri, a hulking ex-Special Services soldier, they embark on a tour of the Ukrainian town of Prypiat, abandoned since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster rendered it uninhabitable.

Wandering through the eerie deserted apartment complexes, they manage to engage in the usual youthful tourist silliness, posing for romantic pictures and cracking wise. But their general uneasiness is not alleviated by such mock-serious comments by Uri as “I want you to tell me if you see something moving in the water.”

After a half-hour or so of subtle build-up, it’s when the group’s dilapidated van refuses to start that all hell breaks loose. As darkness falls, it soon becomes apparent that they are not quite as alone as they thought.

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And so the hapless tourists are forced to deal with creatures ranging from wild dogs to, well, who knows what? The victim count quickly rises as they run into menacing figures who make vividly apparent the nasty effects of decades of radiation poisoning.

Or not so vividly, as director Brad Parker wisely eschews prolonged shots of the horrific creatures in favor of quick glimpses via jumpy hand-held camera work that only hint at their physical deformities. Although the film is mainly shot documentary style, Peli does manage to work in his usual found-footage format in one key sequence.

Even with its brisk 90-minute running time (including credits), Chernobyl Diaries soon proves repetitive with its endless scenes of the frightened victims wandering into forbidding environs only to keep running into things that go bump in the night.             

But the novelty of the setting ultimately proves highly effective. Shot mainly in Eastern European locations that effectively stand in for Prypiat, which is now actually a tourist site, the film is highly convincing in its verisimilitude. Adding greatly to the overall effect is the realistic production design that well conveys buildings long abandoned to nature and the use of such evocative locations as tunnels underneath the streets of Belgrade.

The youthful performers, who include such familiar faces as actor/pop star Jesse McCartney , are very natural in their terrified reactions, and Dimitri Diatchenko is so convincing as the affable but menacing Uri that he seems to have been recruited on the streets of Moscow. 

Opens: Friday, May 25 (Warner Bros. Pictures) Production: Alcon Entertainment, FilmNation Entertainment, Oren Peli/Brian Witten Pictures Cast: Devin Kelley, Jonathan Sadowski, Ingrid Boso Berdal, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Jesse McCartney, Nathan Phillips, Dimitri Diatchenko Director: Brad Parker Screenwriters: Oren Peli, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke Producers: Oren Peli, Brian Witten Executive producers: Richard Sharkey, Rob Cowan, Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Allison Silver, Milan Popelka, Alison Cohen Director of photography: Morten Soborg Editor: Stan Salfas Production designer: Aleksandar Denic Costume designer: Momirka Bailovic Music: Diego Stocco Rated R, 90 min.

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Titan sub tragedy: ethics of extreme tourism in the spotlight

Booming demand needs to be balanced by greater awareness, oversight and regulation

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The Titan sub tragedy, which claimed the lives of five people last week, has prompted an outpouring of grief but also renewed questions about the risks of so-called “extreme tourism”.

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It has shone a spotlight on the safety procedures of private companies offering such experiences and on the people and organisations who should ultimately be responsible for search and rescue if the unthinkable happens.

While extreme exploration – from Everest to the Antarctic – has long been the preserve of professionals, “in recent decades, travelers with deep pockets and little expertise have joined these explorers or even ventured further, paying to visit the bottom of the ocean or the edge of space , touching the literal bounds of Earth”, The New York Times reported. But as the Titan submersible tragedy made evident, “there are no clear safeguards in place when something goes wrong”.

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Technology ‘pushing limits of safety’

There is a trend towards authentic experiences, said Scott Smith, associate professor of hospitality and tourism management at the University of South Carolina, on The Conversation . “More and more, people want to experience something unique and not in a preprogrammed or controlled setting.”

Improvements in tech have enabled companies and tourists to “push the limits of safety”, but “the consequences of failure can be high”.

With little-to-no oversight of the sector it is hard to gauge the number of extreme tourism deaths per year, said Smith, “but when these sad events do occur, they typically receive a lot of attention from the press”.

Despite this, “one of the odd things about extreme tourism is that risk seems to attract rather than deter customers”, said the Financial Times . The paper listed a series of tourism-related fatalities over the past decade – a period that saw an uptick in the number of people wishing to sign up.

Uncharted territory

As modern adventure tourism “ventures into uncharted territory ethically as well as geographically” it “raises many questions”, said The Seattle Times . “Should there be more regulation? If so, who should set and enforce the rules? Are rescue operations even possible in some places extreme tourists are going?”

In the case of both deep-sea exploration and space tourism there is little oversight or guidance on training requirements and even less regulation. In international waters or the upper edge of the Earth’s atmosphere there is the added question of jurisdiction, while extreme trips also pose a significant challenge from an insurance perspective.

With the total cost of the Titan search and rescue operation expected to reach as high as $100 million, “it is unclear whether taxpayers in the countries involved, ultimately, will be required to pay it”, said The New York Times.

There is also a growing debate around whether domestic – often volunteer – search and rescue teams should be expected to risk their own lives to come to the aid of private companies charging huge amounts per person.

Meanwhile, the Titan disaster has “sparked conversations among explorers and wealthy travelers alike about who exactly should be embarking on this type of danger-filled travel”, said The New York Times.

One suggestion is that extreme tourism experiences should come with “buyer beware” warnings, said Smith.

Another, reported by Axios , is that new technology such as the metaverse, where a virtual reality headset would allow you to tour any place on Earth, “might offer an alternative to the real risks of adventure for some customers”.

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Months after the sub tragedy, extreme tourism is… more popular than ever?

Fears that the titan submersible’s tragic end would derail the fast-growing adventure tourism sector were seemingly unfounded..

Published: October 17, 2023

Updated: February 09, 2024

Few stories this year — or century, really — captivated the world quite like the catastrophic loss of the Titan submersible.

Just eight words from the co-founder of OceanGate, the company behind the ill-fated journey, sum up why : “They were very well aware of the risks.”

The five passengers went anyway, paying $250k each for the chance to do so.

That’s extreme tourism for you

Despite its risks — and exorbitant price tags — adventure tourism is a fast-growing $282B+ industry, per Robb Report .

• Ninety percent of Adventure Travel Trade Association businesses reported revenue increases last year.

In June, expedition organizers held their collective breath — the Titan’s deadly ending brought a “reality check” as thrillseekers were reminded how real the industry’s dangers are.

The moment of truth didn’t last long: Experts told Robb Report the OceanGate disaster has done nothing to slow extreme tourism’s growth.

• In fact, the business is expected to grow 15.2% annually through 2030.

If you’re a reading-on-a-beach traveler like us, the allure of high-risk travel is baffling.

It’s all in brain chemistry and shows of status, per The Conversation :

• Risky behavior can elicit feelings of euphoria and a sense of personal transformation.
• Plus, the Insta-worthy adventures can double as status symbols.

As the boom continues, social bragging rights are getting harder to muster — after all, 100k+ people now visit Antarctica annually and multiple people have been to both space and the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

The boundary-pushing will only increase, with offerings becoming more daring (and more expensive). If tourists didn’t know the risks before, they do now. And they don’t much care, apparently.

Want in? Start planning now. World View, a startup taking travelers to the edge of space in pressurized capsules attached to weather balloons at $50k per seat, has already sold out its 2024 flights.

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‘Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea’ Documentary to Air on Channel 5, Set to Explore Wider Context About Voyage and Extreme Tourism

By Manori Ravindran

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The heartrending search to locate and rescue the Titan submersible before it runs out of its four-day air supply will be the focus of a new fast-turnaround documentary on U.K. broadcaster Channel 5 .

“ Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea” has been scheduled to air on Thursday at 7 p.m. local time. The doc will be presented by 5 News host Dan Walker.

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Ian Rumsey, managing director of content for ITN, said: “This program will chart everything from the exploration itself, to the rise of extreme tourism, to the rescue attempts, but above all it will tell a very human story that has captured the nation which is about 5 people, all with families, who are trapped at the bottom of the ocean. Our expertise and heritage in fast-turnaround documentaries and reputation for responsible filmmaking means we always treat such stories with great sensitivity.”

The Titan, which is roughly the size of a truck, went missing in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday with five crew members on board. Government agencies and deep-sea specialists are assisting with an extensive rescue operation. Banging sounds were detected in a search area on Tuesday, marking the first breakthrough in what’s now been a three-day search and rescue operation for the submersible, which lost contact on Sunday about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive to see the Titanic wreck. The Titan’s air supply is projected to run out in less than 18 hours.

There are five people confirmed on board: British businessman Hamish Harding; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman; former French Navy diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet; and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

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Extreme Tourism: 6 Adventures You Need to Have Now

Sandals and Club Med might be for some people, but for others a vacation isn’t complete without some level of danger, thrills, and adrenaline. If that sounds like you, then you just might be an extreme tourist. Here’s our list of amazing adventures that you need to have out now.

By Keith David Langston

Auckland Sky Tower

Auckland, new zealand.

The Auckland Sky Tower is over 1,000 feet tall and is the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere. The Sky Tower sits in the middle of Auckland’s CBD and is part of the massive Sky City complex, which houses two hotels, a casino, and numerous restaurants and clubs. The highlights of the Sky Tower is the opulent restaurant, Orbit 360, located over 50 floors above the ground, and the sky walk and sky jump. That’s right. If you’re feeling brave, you can walk around the rim of the Sky Tower without an barrier between your foot and the ledge. And if you’re really feeling adventurous, you can even jump off!

Storm Chasing

Oklahoma and colorado, usa.

The movie Twister made storm chasing a global phenomenon, and since then hte public’s demand for that experience has only grown. There’s good news, with Storm Chasing Adventure Tours , you can go on your very own storm chasing adventure, guided by experts. Be forewarned, there’s no 100% guarantee that you’ll see a tornado, however, they use NOAA data that provides an extremely high probability. So, if you have $2,200 and really want to see a tornado, this is your chance.

Devil’s Pool

Victoria falls, border of zambia and zimbabwe.

Victoria Falls is the largest waterfall in the world. And with all that rushing water, small pools have formed after years of erosion. One of those is Devil’s Pool, which sits right at the very tip of the falls, allowing swimmers to look over the edge and see the falling water below. But be warned, varying water levels can make the pool extremely unsafe. If you plan on visiting, check out the pool’s website which will let you know if the pool is open or not.

You all know this feeling right? Swimming got boring, so you started snorkeling, snorkeling got boring so you started scuba diving, scuba got boring so you decided that you’d cut a small hole into the ice in Antarctica, dive in, and then swim beneath the icebergs. That’s a totally logical progression, right? Well, Waterproof Expeditions thinks so, and you can join them for their Antarctic and Arctic scuba trips .

Masaya Volcano

Maybe ice isn’t your thing. Maybe you like it hot. Well, I’ve got something really hot for you to do. Head down to Nicaragua and stare into an active volcano! According to the Smithsonian, the volcano’s last eruption was in 2019 ( gulp ), but that’s good news for visitors. Since it’s an active volcano, Masaya has a lava lake that glows red and orange when the sun goes down. They even offer tours !

Extreme Ironing

Anywhere and everywhere.

What happens when domestic chores get in the way of your extreme adventure? I mean, a wonderful vacation is great, but what about the ironing? Who’s gonna’ do that?

Well, there is one option… You can always take the ironing with you!

That’s right, extreme ironing is the art (or sport) of ironing in extreme conditions. The trend caught on in the early 2000’s as a joke, but has since grown a devout following.

You can do it underwater:

On the side of a cliff:

Or even on the middle of the freeway:

Whatever your extreme desires are, there’s a trip and activity out there waiting for you. So go ahead, book your flight, and prepare for the adventure of a lifetime (and don’t forget your iron!)

Celebrate Mrs. Maisel’s 8 Marvelous Nights of Hanukkah at INTERSECT by Lexus in NYC

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7 Unique Spots to Visit In The USA This Year

Though many of us love a good globetrot, it can be nice to break up our worldly adventures by exploring…

What Is Extreme Tourism?

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Extreme tourism, also sometimes referred to as shock tourism, is travel that is strongly characterized by a sense of adventure or even physical danger. The “extreme” aspect of this type of tourism may derive from a destination itself or from one or more activities which are engaged in during one’s trip. Extreme tourism may be arranged by the traveler herself or may be coordinated by an adventure travel company. Critics of this type of tourism argue that it may lead to environmental damage.

In some cases, extreme tourism draws its sense of thrill or risk from a destination. Some extreme tourists travel to places that are considered moderately or even extremely unsafe for physical or political reasons. For instance, they may travel to regions that have been affected by nuclear disasters, like the area surrounding the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, or to countries that are at war.

Another form of extreme tourism involves traveling to a destination in order to participate in one or more adventurous or potentially dangerous activities. While there are many different extreme activities in which one can participate, most of these activities are physical in nature. For example, an extreme tourist may take a trip which involves cage diving with great white sharks, BASE jumping, or parachuting from a static point such as a skyscraper or cliff, trekking across a desert, or exploring underwater caves.

Some travelers plan their own extreme tourism trips, while others work with an adventure travel agency. As extreme activities and destinations can pose a number of risks to the traveler, many travel experts advise booking one’s trip through an agency. Working with experienced extreme travel professionals can help ensure that the traveler is provided with accommodation and proper supplies during her trip and that she receives adequate medical attention if she is hurt. An extreme travel company may also be able to connect the traveler with local guides or translators when necessary.

Opponents of extreme tourism hold that this form of travel may put certain areas of the planet at a heightened risk of destruction. For instance, extreme travel to the Antarctic rose significantly from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. Many environmentalists and scientific researchers contend that continued Antarctic tourism may lead to the pollution of the continent as well as the introduction of invasive foreign organisms, which could threaten the existing purity of its ecosystems.

Related Articles

• What Is Archaeological Tourism?
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How to protect your Las Vegas home from extreme heat

Homes in Las Vegas have to endure long and scorching summers. Here are some tips on how to protect your home from damage caused by extreme heat.

Las Vegas is known for its scorching summers that come with triple-digit temperatures and excessive heat warnings.

The extreme heat in Southern Nevada can be dangerous for people but also for homes. Extreme heat can damage pipes, warp and expand floorboards, deteriorate attics, crack roofs and cause paint to flake and peel, said ServPro’s website, which is a property restoration company.

Here are some tips to protect residences from damage that can be caused by extreme heat, according to ServPro and Nerdwallet.

— Ensure air conditioning units are working and have been recently inspected and replace filters.

— Insulate the attic, if you have one.

— Have a programmable thermostat that can adjust the temperature in the home throughout the day.

— Caulk windows and doors and install weather stripping to ensure as little hot air gets into a home as possible.

— Ensure shades actually block light and if not upgrade them.

— Install heat blocking film on windows and glass.

— Consider installing double-pane windows.

— Make sure the exterior of the home and the roof is painted a lighter color in order to reflect more heat.

— Inspect paint both inside and outside the house, if new paint is needed look for paint that is labeled heat-resistant and has UV protection.

— Set up appliances for summer weather, ensure refrigerator coils are clear and have space, set water heater to 120 degrees.

— Fix leaky faucets and install low flow shower heads.

— Get a backup generator in case of a prolonged power outage.

Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at [email protected]. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X.

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New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plans to talk about abortion rights and housing at a Biden-Harris campaign event in Las Vegas.

Tens of millions in the US remain under dangerous heat warnings

Extreme heat alerts remain in effect for tens of millions of people in the United States as cities including Chicago break heat records

PHOENIX -- Extreme heat alerts continued for tens of millions of people in the United States on Tuesday as cities including Chicago broke records at the start of a week of sweltering weather.

States in the Midwest started to bake Monday in what the National Weather Service called a dangerous and long duration heat wave that was expected to stretch from Iowa to Maine into at least Friday.

On Monday, Chicago broke a 1957 temperature record with a high of 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36.1 degrees Celsius). Hot and muggy conditions will continue this week with peak heat indexes near 100 F (37.7 C) at times, the National Weather Service in Chicago said in a post on social platform X.

The heat didn't stop people in Chicago's Grant Park from ordering the hottest dishes off the menu at the food truck where Emmanuel Ramos is a cook, WBBM-TV reported .

“They be ordering the hottest stuff on the hottest day,” he said. “They order ramen, corn — they just want everything hot. I don’t know why,” said Ramos. “Right now, something that would be good is the smoothies.”

The U.S. last year saw the most heat waves , consisting of abnormally hot weather lasting more than two days, since 1936. Officials warned residents to take precautions.

Much of the Midwest and Northeast were under heat warnings or watches with officials announcing the opening of cooling centers and urging people to limit outdoor activities when possible and to check in with family members and neighbors who may be vulnerable to the heat.

The heat has been especially dangerous in recent years in Phoenix, where 645 people died from heat-related causes in 2023, which was a record. Temperatures there hit 112 F (44.4 C) on Saturday. Weather service forecasters say the first two weeks of June in Phoenix were the hottest start to the month on record there.

A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix, Ted Whittock, advised reducing time outdoors between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., staying hydrated and wearing light, looser fitting clothing. More than 100 cooling centers were open in the city and surrounding county, including two new overnight ones.

In Southern California, firefighters increased their containment of a large wildfire in mountains north of Los Angeles on Monday after a weekend of explosive, wind-driven growth along Interstate 5.

The warming temperatures come amid growing concern about the effects of extreme heat and wildfire smoke. The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity on Monday sent a petition to the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking it to recognize extreme heat and wildfire smoke as major disasters.

The agency did not immediately issue a specific response to the petition. A FEMA spokesperson for the western U.S. states said there was nothing that would preclude an emergency declaration for extreme heat, but noted that there would need to be an immediate threat to life and safety that local authorities could not respond to.

While much of the U.S. swelters, late-season snow was forecast for the northern Rockies on Monday into Tuesday. Parts of Montana and north-central Idaho were under a winter storm warning. As much as 20 inches (51 centimeters) was predicted for higher elevations around Glacier National Park.

Meanwhile, a fresh batch of tropical moisture was bringing an increasing threat of heavy rain and flash flooding to the central Gulf Coast.

Hurricane season this year is forecast to be among the most active in recent memory.

Follow AP’s coverage of weather at https://apnews.com/hub/weather

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Lily Brett’s trip to Poland with her Holocaust survivor father inspired her novel, Too Many Men. 25 years later, it’s a film: Treasure

Casual Academic, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

Disclosure statement

Tess Scholfield-Peters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Technology Sydney provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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Lily Brett’s acclaimed novel Too Many Men was published 25 years ago, in 1999. Next month, a feature film adaptation, Treasure , directed by Julia von Heinz and starring Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry, will screen in Australia.

The novel tells the story of a daughter of Holocaust survivors, 43-year-old Ruth Rothwax, and her 81-year-old father, Edek, who travel back to Edek’s native Poland – and to Auschwitz concentration camp (now a museum), which he survived. They’re searching for answers to family questions and secrets.

Brett, like her protagonist, is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, part of what is known as the second generation. Born in Germany, she then migrated to Melbourne with her parents in 1948. She draws on the experience of growing up under the same roof as her parents’ acute trauma in her fiction.

Reviewing Too Many Men, which would go on to win the Commonwealth Writers Prize and be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Kevin Brophy suggested it “might be the novel Lily Brett has been trying to write all these years”. The Australian called it her “masterpiece”. Too Many Men was her fourth novel to inhabit second-generation Holocaust survivors (and she would again in two more, including a sequel, You Gotta Have Balls ).

I am the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor , part of the third generation. My grandfather, Harry, was born in Berlin in 1920, to two non-practising Jews, Max and Edith, who both perished in camps (Max at Auschwitz , Edith at Theresienstadt ). Harry was imprisoned in Buchenwald camp at 18 and was released after one month, in December 1938. An emigration permit for Holland had been miraculously secured for him. At that time, emigration was the preferred solution, not extermination.

Father and daughter ‘polar opposites’

In Too Many Men, Ruth and Edek are almost polar opposites in their approach to their journey. From the moment she disembarks the plane from her home city of New York until she leaves again on the final page, Ruth is charged with seething rage.

It is difficult, as readers (and companions in our protagonist’s head) not to be affected – and at times uncomfortable with – Ruth’s disdain for Poland and all Polish people. In her head, they are collectively guilty of antisemitism and the crimes of the past. She obsessively studies Holocaust history and knows everything about the key Nazi figures and their war machine.

Ruth is moved to tears often, quick to anger and reliant on Mylanta for consistent stomach upsets, often connected to her intense emotive reactions to her surroundings. It is apparent on every page that she is deeply impacted by her two Auschwitz survivor parents and all they experienced and witnessed. Ruth’s parents’ horrific recollections seem to be with her always: their memories of corpses and shaved heads and murdered babies haunt her.

Edek, on the other hand, is vivacious and cheery, and seems to fixate on the horror far less than his daughter. According to him, what happened cannot be undone: there is no use crying for the long dead. Brett’s characteristic observational humour filters through Edek, diffusing Ruth’s maudlin and at times difficult view of the past.

Holocaust culture and the second generation

As a popular Holocaust text, Too Many Men was instrumental in bringing this story of second-generation trauma to the mainstream. In the decade it was released, the 1990s, so were Oscar-winning Holocaust films Schindler’s List , a commercial blockbuster, and Italian hit Life is Beautiful .

As a writer and academic, I am keenly interested in how these texts communicate the trauma of Holocaust survivors, and the enduring relevance of these stories. The answer to these questions is not easy – especially now, as extremist governments are on the rise and atrocities are being committed as I write. Art that explores historic atrocity, human depravity and its lingering impact is hauntingly pertinent.

Too Many Men is a work of fiction, yet the parallels to Brett’s own life are difficult not to register while reading. It is clear the extreme trauma her parents experienced left indelible marks on Brett’s psyche.

Second-generation scholar Eva Hoffman dates the announcement of the second generation’s existence to 1979, with the publication of Helen Epstein’s book Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors . The 1990s saw a proliferation of psychological and ethnographic research in this field, as it grew increasingly apparent that children of Holocaust survivors are impacted by their proximity to the traumatised in various ways.

In Brett’s case, her parents experienced nightmares multiple times a week. Her mother screamed in her sleep and talked about children with holes in their cheeks. Her protagonist Ruth’s late mother, Rooshka, told her the same stories.

The shadowy, unending grief of Brett’s parents is inescapable. Growing up, the ghosts of her murdered family members lived under the same roof as Brett, her parents and her sister ( who has said “the Holocaust was rarely talked about” in their home). Theirs was a life defined by absence and silence.

Absence is a common thread in scholarship by and about the second generation. It is common for survivors to remain silent about their experiences. If they do reveal anything, their recollections are often fragmented, patchy and – for children and grandchildren – painfully incomplete.

I experienced this myself when I asked my grandfather, Harry, about his experience during the Holocaust. Harry was silent about his experiences for many years, even to his children. The first time his partner, Lynn, heard about his experiences in detail was when he was interviewed in 1997 for the Visual History Foundation’s Survivors of the Shoah Project , an international effort to record the lives and Holocaust experiences of remaining survivors.

Any questions about the past could unleash an unpredictable volatility in both her parents. There were no simple questions or simple answers about their pasts. All simplicity seemed to have been erased from their experience.

The past is a kind of abstract, shadowy thing. For the second and third generations, journeys back to physical, geographical place become part of the story, an antidote to this mystified history.

This narrative “return” could constitute a genre in itself, so pervasive is this need for children and grandchildren of survivors to find meaning through geographical place. Ruth and Edek return to Łódź, to 23 Kamedulska Street, where Edek’s family once lived pre-Holocaust. Brett writes:

23 Kamedulska Street wasn’t a shrine. It was just the site of a former life. It wasn’t a mausoleum. There was no one buried or interned here. This building was nothing more than a patchy amalgam of building materials. Nothing of those who had lived there were left. The markings on the walls and floors from fingers and feet were long gone. Rubbed out. There were no sounds from past lives. No smells. There was nothing.

For Ruth, as for many descendants of those murdered during the Holocaust, these sites of former life become memorial places, given that there are no graves for the deceased. It is an interesting cross-section of space, where history intervenes with the present. The discord between past and present permeates every page of Brett’s text, as does the tension between generations: between the child who is desperate to find meaning, and the survivor who would rather forget.

“If you stand still, Dad, you can feel the past,” she said. “You can feel the life.” “Don’t speak like that,” Edek said. “It will be no good for both of us.”

How can humans be capable of such things?

When Edek and Ruth visit Auschwitz, which, as Ruth notes, the Poles refer to as the Auschwitz Museum, not the Auschwitz death camp, she cannot seem to comprehend that in the present, she is removed from the atrocities that occurred there:

Ruth was disturbed by the absence. The absence of dirt, filth, stench, stink. The absence of cruelty. The absence of suffering. She’d expected to see the suffering in the air, on the ground, in the walls, on every fence.

My great-grandfather, Max, perished at Auschwitz too. When I was 21, I visited the museum. Similarly to Ruth, I was overwhelmed by the quiet of the place, and by the piles of human hair and children’s shoes exhibited in glass cases. Of course, the hordes of tourists and my unbearably melodramatic guide made the visit more akin to a tourist experience than a memorial of my great-grandfather’s final resting place.

Popular Holocaust culture has surrounded us – at times to the point of saturation – since the very first instance of the televised trauma of survivors: the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann, as the journalism of Hannah Arendt documents, was not, in actuality, an evil monster, though his crimes would suggest otherwise.

He was a man, as you would see on the street or in an office, psychologically sound according to those who examined him. He was a man who was absolutely dedicated to his government’s plight: just following the orders he was given, orders that gave him his life’s purpose. There is a poignant and enduring relevance of Arendt’s thesis about the banality of human evil, how such catastrophic and depraved acts are committed by people who most likely go home to their families and eat a nice meal afterwards.

Throughout Too Many Men, the voice of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss materialises inside Ruth’s head. Höss attempts to rationalise his obscenities to Ruth, who grows progressively more infuriated.

Reading these passages, I was reminded of Jonathan Glazer’s 2023 film adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel, The Zone of Interest , which follows Höss’s domestic life. The film highlights that this ambitious family man, who lives in an idyllic home with his family next to Auschwitz camp, was not in fact an unimaginable, mythically evil figure.

I wonder if this was Brett’s thinking in including the Höss character in her own text. To remind the reader he was human; they were all humans. And yet, the question persists: how can humans be capable of such things?

When Too Many Men was released 25 years ago, it undoubtedly spoke to many and exemplified the lived experience of children of survivors, for whom reading the tribulations of Ruth and Edek Rothwax would have been familiar – and possibly cathartic.

Yet, I am always skeptical of the enduring function of Holocaust texts that seem to favour sentimentality and familiar tropes over more innovative and interesting ways to tell a story we all know very well.

Evaluating the enduring success of Too Many Men is difficult because, as is the case with all literature, it comes down to individual taste. While some passages I found moving, others I found too loaded with “shock” value Holocaust imagery – which, after 25 years, no longer shocks. We are exposed to humanity’s devastating inhumanity every day. When it comes to the relevance of Holocaust texts such as Too Many Men, I wonder what is left to learn, or left to feel.

My grandfather lived with his trauma all his life. For me his trauma was a story, detached from my own lived experience. These stories are precious and important to preserve; how we do so responsibly through art is a continuing – and crucial – challenge.

The film Treasure will screen in Australia from July 18.

• Australian literature
• Stephen Fry
• Hannah Arendt
• Steven Spielberg
• Lena Dunham
• Adolf Eichmann
• Australian fiction
• Cultural touchstones
• Zone of Interest

Social Media Producer

Student & Academic Services Officer

Dean (Head of School), Indigenous Knowledges

Senior Research Fellow - Curtin Institute for Energy Transition (CIET)

Laboratory Head - RNA Biology

Community cooling centers open in Columbus as extreme heat wave hits

Columbus recorded a high temperature of 95 degrees Monday at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, the highest temperature in 2024 — so far.

It's going to be hot this week. Very hot. A dangerous, "feels like" and darn close to actual 100-degree sort of hot.

As such, the Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) and the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department are opening up their locations to serve as community cooling centers for anyone who needs refuge from the sweltering sun.

More: Heat advisory issued for most of Ohio through Friday; thunderstorms forecast Monday

All 23 of Columbus Metropolitan Library's locations are open to the public for cooling during their normal hours this week, and the Main, Barnett, Hilltop and Northern Lights branches have extended hours for cooling, according to a CML press release.

These four branches will stay open until 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday instead of their normal 6 p.m. close, and they'll be open on Wednesday during the Juneteenth holiday from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. while the other library locations are closed for the holiday.

City Council and Gateway Film Center offering free movie tickets during heat wave

Columbus City Council and the Gateway Film Center are teaming up to offer two days of free movies for families looking to escape the heat. The movie tickets will include popcorn and soda, according to a news release from City Council.

The free movies will be shown on Wednesday, June 19 and Thursday, June 20 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Gateway Film Center located at 1550 North High St. Attendees will be able to choose from the following films:

• Tuesday (2024)
• The Bad Guys (2022)
• Jurassic Park (1993) 4K Restoration
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
• Matilda (1996)
• The Fall Guy (2024)
• Shrek (2001)
• The Grab (2024) - Wednesday Only
• Resistance: They Fought Back (2024) - Wednesday Only

"Extreme weather events are becoming more common; from this week's potentially record breaking heat to the tornadoes and severe storms we've been experiencing," said Councilmember Christopher Wyche. "That's why Council is working with city departments and community partners to support our residents through multiple channels during this heat wave."

Starting on June 19, five of Columbus Recreation and Parks Department's community centers will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. until the heat wave subsides, according to a news release. These five locations are:

• Dodge Community Center
• Driving Park Community Center
• Glenwood Community Center
• Linden Community Center
• Marion Franklin Community Center

Additionally, the city's public pools and "spraygrounds" will have extended hours during the heat dome. Starting June 19, all of the city's pools will be open 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. and the $1 admission fee will be waived until the heat goes away. The city's "spraygrounds" will be open 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. during the same period.

Juneteenth cooling centers

Trinity Episcopal Church at 125 E. Broad St. will open as a cooling center on Wednesday, Juneteenth, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to a press release.

Four of CML's library locations and five Columbus parks and recreation centers will also be open on Juneteenth for cooling.

If you're a visual learner, here's a map of the cooling centers around Columbus.

How to avoid overheating, heat stroke during heat wave

Columbus Public Health offers some tips to beat the heat and care for yourself during the heat wave. They are:

• Drink plenty of water. Do not wait until you are thirsty.
• Stay in air conditioning whenever possible. If you do not have an air conditioner, use movie theatres, malls, libraries and other public places that are cool.
• Avoid beverages with alcohol, caffeine and sugar because they will dehydrate you.
• Eat light meals.
• Wear lightweight, light-colored clothing.
• Avoid strenuous activities, and limit them to morning and evening hours.
• Learn the signs and symptoms of heat-related illnesses and how to treat them.
• Check on family members, friends and neighbors.
• Never leave people or pets in a closed car.

After publication, CML announced their Driving Park location would not have extended hours or be open on Juneteenth. Instead, their Barnett location will be open during that time. The story and the map have been updated to reflect that change .

[email protected]

@NathanRHart

Want to try something off the beaten path? Here are some weird things to do in Iowa.

• Spend the night at one of the most haunted places in the Midwest in Monticello
• Appreciate the life of a hobo in Britt

Just curious:  This occasional feature in the Des Moines Register aims to answer your questions about Iowa. Is there some place, event, lore, history or cultural quirk you're just curious about? Email your question to the Des Moines Register's Bill Steiden at  [email protected] .

You can only make so many day trips to Adventureland before wondering, "What am I missing?" Thankfully, Iowa is home to an endless supply of weird, wacky and skin-crawling pastimes that'll make the most seasoned traveler do a double take.

Here are five tourist attractions for those looking to get off the beaten path.

Get all strung out on puppets in Mason City

Ever heard of Bill Baird? No?

You probably know Jim Henson though. Henson of Muppets fame interned with Baird before going on to create "Fraggle Rock" and the characters for "Sesame Street." The influence of Baird on Hensen's Muppets is clear at the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum in Mason City, which houses a special collection of his marionettes and hand puppets, including those used for "The Lonely Goatherd" scene in the film "The Sound of Music ."

Baird himself moved with his family as a teenager to Mason City, where he gave performances of “Treasure Island” in their attic, then returned there in his retirement. In between, Baird created thousands of puppets, including Charlemane the lion ( which played sidekick to legendary TV news anchor Walter Cronkite on a short-lived morning show), performed on Broadway and helped design floats for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade .

The museum received its puppet selections directly from Baird.

Previously: Mason City museum improves display of puppet collection

The MacNider Museum building alone is worth a visit. The Tudor-style mansion is a former convent remodeled into a museum in 1965 with the goal of retaining the original home's personality. It now houses a permanent collection of American art, traveling exhibitions and an Imagination Playground for children.

The MacNider Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free.

Spend the night at the haunted Edinburgh Manor

Many people have heard of Edinburgh Manor in Monticello, a former mental institution and retirement home rumored to be one of the most haunted places in the Midwest. It's been featured on Zak Bagans' show "Ghost Adventures " and the Travel Channel's "Destination Fear ."

But did you know you can stay there overnight?

The manor offers private rooms for one to five people starting at $275 a night, with each additional person costing $55. Guests can explore the bedroom of “Susie” the ghost , listen for voices or look for the shadowy figure that lives in the basement. The owners claim to have had ghostly hands touch and squeeze them at night, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported .

More: These 9 creepy Iowa ghost stories will give you goosebumps

It's not a hotel though; the building has electricity but no heat or running water. Overnight visitors have access to a house on site that has a bathroom and kitchen. Plan to bring your own sleeping bag because bedding isn't provided.

If that sounds too extreme, the owners offer a one-to-two-hour tour during daylight hours. Visits must be booked in advance and are typically offered on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Admission to the day tour is $10 per person.

Or, visit the slight less spooky Spook Cave

If you're looking for an excursion for all ages, Spook Cave and Campground, about 7 miles west of McGregor in rural Clayton County, gives guided boat tours through a flooded cavern .

Early settlers near McGregor heard strange noises coming from a spring and originally called it Spook Hole. Only when local resident Gerald Mielke blasted into the bluff where the spring was in 1953 did he discover the flowing water that made the sound. He opened the cave to commercial touring in 1955 with an unusual underground boat tour — the only one in Iowa. 

Spook Cave is open from May to October with reservations available on weekdays . Rides cost $16 for visitors 13 and older and $11 for children ages 4 to 12. There is no charge for children 3 or younger.

You also can turn your visit into a sleepover. Spook Cave offers camping nearby and a range of cabins to rent , all of which have electricity, heating and air conditioning. Swim at Camp Spook Lake, try your luck fishing at the Bloody Run trout stream or visit the nearby Railroad Employee Cemetery. A little more off the grid is Bloody Run Park, which has 19 primitive campsites for rent in a campground that is notably a home to Iowa’s largest woodpecker, the pileated .

Wander over to the Hobo Museum

Once a year in Britt, population 2,017, the largest documented annual gathering of hobos, rail-riders, and tramps in the United States takes place.

Since 1900, the city has been hosting the hobo convention — a weekend festival that includes a parade, entertainment, food and the election of the king and queen of the hobos. The hobos set up a hobo jungle, selling crafts and chatting with visitors.

The history of this relationship between Britt and its annual guests is documented at the National Hobo Museum, which began as the dream of three lifelong hobos determined to preserve the history of the American hobo, according to the museum's website . Opened in the 1980s, the collection housed in a former movie theater celebrates the lives of traveling laborers.

Make the most of your time in Britt by stopping by the Queen’s Garden across from the Hobo Museum and the National Hobo Cemetery in the northeast corner of Evergreen Cemetery.

The Hobo Museum opens after Memorial Day and closes after Hobo Days weekend, Aug. 8-10 this year. The museum will open during the off season, but only by appointment.

Get wheely into wheels at the L.J. Maasdam Wagon Wheel Sculpture

Leonard Maasdam of Pella loved unusual things.

He had a collection of more than 4,000 elephant figurines, a chandelier made of birthday balloons and a disco ball, and a model train that circled his home. One of his most eccentric creations, a 60-foot tower made of roughly 220 wagon wheels, can still be seen near a soybean field just a few miles off Interstate 80 north of Sully.

"The wheel is one of the oldest inventions of mankind. It goes back to Bible times," Maasdam told the Register in 1996. "I thought, 'There's a surplus of these wheels. Why not make use of them?'"

With the help of a hydraulic crane from Marshalltown, the 91 year old erected the rusty sculpture on a concrete base and surrounded it with a fence made of — wait for it — more wagon wheels. Maasdam's family maintains the site to this day at the intersection of South 48th Avenue East and East 140th Street South .

After you appreciate the art, head back to Sully for a bottle of almond mead at the Van Wijk Winery or grab a piece of coconut cream pie at the Coffee Cup Cafe , where Lance Armstrong stopped for a slice during his 2006 RAGBRAI ride.

Addison Lathers covers growth and development for the Des Moines metro. Reach her at 608-931-1761 or [email protected], and follow her on X at @addisonlathers.

Short Term Lettings Bill and tourism

Self-catering sector supports the need for a registration system but government has got this one seriously wrong.

The Irish Times - Letters to the Editor.

Sir, – Further to “ The Irish Times view on the Short Term Lettings Bill: no excuse for stalling ” (June 12th), our self-catering company, Cottages for Couples in West Cork, aims to bring 6,000 visitors to our 15 properties in West Cork this year. According to Fáilte Ireland this is worth €2 million to the local economy. We support 15 jobs locally.

If this legislation impacts negatively on our business, none of our properties will be available for long-term rentals and we will have no alternative but to close our award-winning business after 30 years, with obvious consequences for the local economy.

This is no exaggeration.

Does this Government really think that the owner of a holiday home in Baltimore who uses their property for six to eight weeks each year will suddenly decide to move it to the long-term rental market? Of course not. Instead they will stop renting it out for the other 44 weeks, thus depriving the local economy of much-needed year-round income.

Getting past EU leaders will be the easy part for von der Leyen

Michael Murphy: All-Ireland race hots up as the final 12 get ready for the last lap

The ultra-Orthodox are Israel’s future. The share of Haredim in the population doubles every 25 years

US Open takeaways: How an event in January foreshadowed Rory McIlroy’s finish

The self-catering sector supports the need for a registration system but the Government have got this one seriously wrong.

There is definitely room for improvement. – Yours, etc,

ANNA and PETER WARBURTON,

Cottages for Couples,

Skibbereen,

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