Don’t Go There!

Chat live with Peter about his new book “Don’t Go There” right here November 14th at 8:30 EST / 5:30 Pacific.

Your chance to get answers to all your travel related questions!

Well, at least they smell. These are just a few of the places found in Peter Greenberg’s new book:

HEREFORD, TEXAS

Hereford, Texas, is proudly called by many in this region “The Saudi Arabia of cattle manure,” with more than 3.5 million meat and dairy cows within a 100-mile radius of the city. With just 154,5000 people calling Hereford home, that means there are about 233 241 cows for every human living in town for every human.

With quaint hotels, various horse shows, and historical spots, Hereford is a subdued diversion from nearby Amarillo but otherwise doesn’t have much to offer, unless you count odor as a commodity. As the locals like to say about Hereford and its cows, “It’s the smell of money.”

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA

Some people call Cedar Rapids “The City of Five Seasons,” where the fifth is “time to enjoy the other four.”

Well, Cedar Rapids also has an unofficial nickname: “The City of Five Smells.”

With I-380 running directly through it, Cedar Rapids, the second second-largest city in Iowa, is home to many grain processing plants, including General Mills and Quaker Oats, which is the largest cereal plant in the world. In Cedar Rapids, most people claim the smells emanating from processing plants are more or less innocuous, pleasantly redolent of Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries or oatmeal, though some days, these sites can offer up a miasma of odors.

Burnt corn, stale, rotting garbage, and over-overcooked oatmeal are some of the more overpowering smells that combine into one nasty stench. Cedar Rapids is also home to the food manufacturing sites of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill, and Ralston Foods. You’ll know when you get close to the town: It will beckon you with clouds of smoke emanating from the industrial center, followed by the smell.

To add insult to injury, at least 100 blocks in Cedar Rapids were under-water when the Cedar River flooded in June 2008. And weeks later, the debris and garbage remaining from the flood began piling up. So much that officials had to reopen the formerly closed Cedar Rapids landfill (once known as “Mount Trashmore”) to accommodate what equated to four football fields, or two years’ worth, of trash.

WILLIAMSBURG, MICHIGAN

Tucked between Elk Lake and Lake Michigan, Grand Traverse Bay, is a great pit stop for the road trip through Michigan’s watery regions. Williamsburg, Michigan, is off the beaten path, with rolling hills and a handful of old-fashioned bed bed-and and-breakfasts. It’s hard to imagine that life in the once-pristine township is no bowl of cherries.

In January 2006, Bill O’Brien, of the Traverse City Record Record-Eagle, reported on the fetid odors emanating from Williamsburg Receiving and Storage’s fruit-processing plant, a place where fresh cherries are turned into delectable maraschino cherries. Turns out that the simple maraschino packs a pretty pungent stench, which may help to explain why the locals plan outdoor parties but don’t stay outside for long.

The reason: a horrible smell coming from the plant’s industrial waste-water site, composed of ferocious quantities of sulfites and salt used in the processing of the cherries. Imagine a 5-million million-gallon, football foot-ball-field-sized lagoon of stagnant wastewater. Welcome to Williamsburg.

ROTORUA, NEW ZEALAND

Home to constantly emitting sulfuric gases, Rotorua is the self-proclaimed stink capital of the world—in fact, it calls itself “Sulfur City.” You want to smell rotten eggs endlessly? You’ve come to the right place. This geothermally active region is actually a major tourist destination for its steaming geysers, otherworldly pools of bubbling mineral lakes, and healing mud baths. But don’t pack your Prada for this trip. The smell of sulfur not only will overpower you during your stay, but will stick to your clothes through several washings! Is it worth a visit? For the first time tourists, perhaps yes, with the cautions mentioned above. Worth a second visit? No.

NAPLES, ITALY – THE STINKIEST PLACE ON EARTH? SOMETIMES

Lots of organized tours to Italy go to or through Naples. It’s the third-largest city in the country, and people usually visit to see Mount Vesuvius and interesting Roman ruins. But they’ll also see something that the brochures don’t mention: How about having to wade through piles of festering filth and trash? In Naples and the surrounding Campania region, the waste disposal industry is Mafia run, specifically by the Camorra, with often disastrous consequences and no way to cut through the red tape. The city goes through cycles when it is literally drowning in garbage.

Things really came to a head when collectors stopped picking up the trash in Naples on December 21, 2007 … and didn’t come back until early to mid-January 2008! A few months later, the European Union filed suit against Italy for failure to dispose of the massive piles of garbage in Naples. In the meantime, residents were surrounded by heaping mounds of moldering trash, and many took to burning the piles, which created a toxic hazard and an overwhelming stench.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened: The region’s dumps hit maximum capacity more than a decade ago, causing the problem to arise almost on an annual basis. Local officials have yet to announce a yearly garbage festival in an attempt to attract curious, unwitting tourists, but that might be their only salvation. Speaking of salvation: Save yourself and don’t go there.

From Don’t Go There!: The Travel Detective’s Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World (Rodale, $17.95).

This hotel had to shell out several million dollars after one couple sued them on allegations that they had been infested with bugs from their five-night stay. The couple claimed to have awoken to bug bites all over them! After returning home, they discovered that the nasty insects had stowed away in their luggage and were now infesting their own home. They said that there were several pieces of furniture that had to be thrown away due to the incident. All of this for no less than the equivalent of 500$ per night! The hotel admitted eventually to having known to have some infestation in the headboards of a few of their guest rooms. An incident has not since occurred, but still…

Lead from the old mine seeps up through the soil and into the atmosphere, clogging the air and infecting people with heavy metal toxins. Open quarries and scrap metal litter the ground. This environment is most a problem of children, as longtime exposure leads to dire results. Their lead count ranges from 60 to 120 micrograms, and can even go up to 300 micrograms. The highest accepted value is 10.

The author of “Don’t Go There!” will be chatting live here as well as on his own website: 

http://petergreenberg.com/

The chat will happen at 8:30PM EST on Friday, November 14th!

What’s your expectancy of a beach? Sun? Surf? Sand? How about miles and miles of plastic? The shore of Kamilo Beach, located on Hawaii’s Big Island, actually has a new type of sand with plastic grains embedded into the rest. This collects at the surface of the beach and makes it very hard to have a pleasant time walking on it.

On Kahuku Beach in Honolulu, trash continually washes up on shore. Nets, tires, buoys, all sorts of debris washes up here. The golf balls in the sand can’t be easy on the feet either. Don’t go there.

Westin Europa & Regina, Venice: The 6th floor smelled like a sewer, the carpet was torn and filthy, the room needed painting. When I complained to Tauck World Discovery and Westin I received a perfunctory reply that did not address the problem, it is my opinion that no one [cares].

Nestled near both San Francisco and Los Angeles, this valley is like a bowl of pollution stew. All of the smog from the major cities carries over and settle in the lower area, mingling with the heavy diesel pollution from the local agriculture communities. One of its cities, Arvin, has been dubbed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as the most polluted in America. For goodness sakes, some people have to actually remain inside on some of the worst days! Childhood asthma is nearly 5% more common than anywhere else in the nation.

The neighboring city, Bakersfield, adds heat in from the highway for one broiling stinkfest. And Fresno, also in the area, has air that is proclaimed to be “just as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day”. 99 days of the year on average it is on orange alert for such contamination, and 15 days when it’s in code red! So unless you’d like to find yourself acquiring asthma, emphysema, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes, don’t go there!

Fajita Flats restaurant.

You’ll be dissappoined by the amount of food you get and shocked by the prices.

I HAVE BEEN TO GERMANY, AUSTRIA, ITALY AND IT WAS WONDERFUL. I AM A FEMALE TRAVELING ALONE.

MALLORCA IS UNBELIEVABLY RUDE AND UNFRIENDLY.  I WAS IN TEARS IN LESS THAN A WEEK AND WANTED TO COME HOME.  IN FACT, LOOK AT TRIPADVISOR.COM AND DO A SEARCH FOR ‘UNFRIENDLY MALLORCA’ AND SEE HOW MUCH COMES UP.  WISH I HAD DONE THAT.