El Museo de las Momias

Here is another stop on my vacation list - The Museum of the Mummies, in Guanajuato, MX. How come so many places I would like to see are in Mexico? Maybe it is simply because that is where all the creepy stuff goes to hide from the rest of the planet.

It seems they had a cholera epidemic way back in 1833, and the residents - who were mostly poor, could not afford to pay the grave tax. Instead of burying them, the state put them in this museum. So not only is it a creepy place, it is also a monument to man's inherrent inhumanity.

Truly a place of nightmares...

Another Stop on My Vacation List... Overtoun Bridge

This mysterious Scottish bridge is famous for it's strange effect on the canine species. It seems they want to jump off of it to their deaths on the rocks below, for some unknown reason.

At least 50 dogs are known to have done this. It is also said that a man once tossed his baby off of it after claiming it was the Anti-Christ. Later, he threw himself as well.

At any rate, it makes a fine stop on my little vacation plan.

Meteoras - Another stop on my travel list.

In medieval Greece, the monks of the ancient Byzantine Empire found themselves under attack by pirates and other undesirables. They built the monastaries of Meteoras to counter this threat. They are a series of fortified monastaries built on the tops of mountains and rocks, some thousands of feet up with no way to reach them but rope or ladder. These monks have lived in the cracks, caves, and hollows of these rocky abodes for hundreds of years, outlasting the Empire that created them. They are still occupied to this day.

Photo by IHarsten.

Bolivian Death Road

Another stop on my places to see list, though I am not sure I really want to travel on it, is the Yungas Highway in Bolivia. This 10 foot wide, one lane highway is rated as the most dangerous in the world. It traverses the side of the Andes on it's way to La Paz, Bolivia. It has a 3000 foot drop on one side and no guardrails, plus it is extrememly steep in places. All of these factors combine to give this highway a very high death toll, as cars and trucks routinely careen off the edge into the jungles below.

I would love to go and see this just for it's sheer scale and the danger it represents, but getting me to drive on it might be a hard proposition. This is man against nature at it's most basic a raw level.

By the way, it has become fashionable to mountain bike down this road, and a cottage industry that caters to foreign mountain bikers has sprung up. It is not in any means safe, as many of these same mountain bikers have plunged to their screaming death from the sheer face of the cliffs as they have overshot turns, or fallen down unseen holes hidden by jungle foliage.