Hell on Earth: Top 7 Otherworldly Destinations with Erika Engelhaupt

Introduction

Jason: That is our guest today, Erika Engelhaupt. She is the author of a new National Geographic book called Go to Hell: A Traveler’s Guide to Earth’s Most Otherworldly Destinations. And I thought, what better way to celebrate Halloween than to mix it with travel like she has done in this book? And I asked Erika to pull out her top seven places to experience hell on Earth. You’re going to hear an incredible mix of off-the-beaten-path destinations. If you want to add some hellscapes to your bucket list, this is the show for you. You’re going to get some history, some culture, science. You’re going to get some legends, some of these portals to the underworld you may discover. You’re going to hear about the birthplace of Halloween, the Devil’s Bath, and so much more. It’s a fun one, and I know you’re going to love it. So buckle up, strap in. Thanks for being here, and welcome to the Zero to Travel podcast.

Jason: Hey, it’s Jason here with ZeroToTravel.com. Welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out, letting me bring a little travel into your ears today. This is the show to help you travel the world on your terms, to fill your life with as much travel as you desire, no matter what your situation or experience. We’re going to dive right into this. Just a quick reminder, we have a newsletter. You can sign up over at ZeroToTravel.com/newsletter. I love these lists, when an author puts so much time and effort and research into a book and then we get to pick their brain and hear their top seven picks from the book. This will give you a good taste of what is in this book. And it’s a really unique way to explore some different parts of the world, as you’ll hear today on this global tour of Earth’s most otherworldly destinations. Please enjoy this episode, and thanks for listening. Cheers.

From Science Writer to Hell Travel Guide

Jason: Erika Engelhaupt, welcome to the Zero to Travel podcast, my friend. Thanks for being here, and a huge welcome. I’m excited to chat with you today about this book.

Erika: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.

Jason: Yeah, your first travel book. I mean, you’re normally a science writer, and I was wondering how you got to that point. Before we dive into this list, we have seven places to experience hell on Earth. We thought this would be a fun way to talk about some of the content in the book and to give you a chance to pull out some of your favorites, some places you’ve been, some places you want to go. You went to university in Boulder, Colorado, which is where I lived before moving to Norway, so I’m very fond of Boulder.

Erika: Oh, great. Yes.

Jason: And you studied environmental science there. And I’m wondering how you went from that to writing about…

Erika: About hell? Yeah.

Jason: You know, these sort of dark, macabre themes.

Erika: I know. Boulder strikes people as a happy, sunny place. Right. While I was in Boulder, actually getting a graduate degree in environmental science, I started to make the switch into science journalism. And I love it because I get to write about so many different things. As someone with a background in science, it was really hard for me to focus on researching one thing for the rest of my life. And so as a science journalist, I get to not only travel the world, but also learn about something new basically every day. And so I love that. I ended up working at National Geographic in Washington, D.C. as a science editor.

Jason: It’s like the dream job for a science editor, right?

Erika: Oh, yeah. I mean, it was so fantastic. And then I went freelance in 2016, but I still mainly work for National Geographic as a freelancer. I started writing books, and my first book was based on a blog that I had been doing while I was there as an editor, and even before I was at Nat Geo. The blog was called Gory Details, so that gives you a little bit of an idea of some of the kinds of things I’m interested in. If it’s weird, gross, creepy, I probably am into it. So I’ve written about things like forensic science and medical curiosities. I just love that kind of stuff. And so, of course, Halloween is my favorite season.

After I wrote Gory Details, we started talking about what my next book would be. And one of the things that stuck in my mind from my time at Nat Geo was all of these amazing places around the world that, at the time, I called awesomely awful places. Your lava lakes and flaming craters and toxic caves and just all these fascinating places. And one of the book editors at National Geographic said, you know, we are interested in a book about hellish destinations. And they had some ideas of a few places, and they actually were some of the same places that I had written about as awesomely awful destinations. So we started putting two and two together, and I started doing some more background research. And I realized how many amazing places around the world had some connection to hell or the underworld, either through legends or lore, or because they inspired what people around the world, different cultures, and throughout human history have imagined an underworld or another realm to be like. Because, of course, people look around the world at the features around them, and those that are most awesomely awful, like those lakes of fire or jagged, rocky landscapes, they have incorporated them into their idea of what another world might be like.

I started to realize this was actually a really great travel guide, and also a way to travel around the world and throughout history and learn about all of these different cultures and their ideas and the places that have inspired us the most throughout our history. And so it just all kind of came together. Of course, as a science writer, I like to put in a little bit of the geology of hell as well. I really like doing the deep dive into some of the history and even a little bit of the science behind these places, because many of them are natural places. And our criteria were that there had to be something interesting to see, either a man-made or natural feature, something that would be really interesting to see, and that had an interesting backstory. So that’s how the book came about.

Video Game Underworlds and Near-Death Experiences

Jason: Those are great parameters, especially for this show, because we know we’re going to get some interesting stuff here. It’s interesting, when you describe some of the content in the book, what was the term you said? Fabulously awful, or what was it?

Erika: Awesomely awful.

Jason: Awesomely awful, yeah. Sorry, there was alliteration there. I got that. You know, some of these awesomely awful places, I’m sure these aren’t in the book, but it could be like an Orlando theme park on a hot summer day. That might be hell for some people. But I always imagined hell as kind of like the castle levels in Mario Brothers, where there’s the swinging fire things, the big lizard guy. It’s probably a little bit like that kind of vibe. I don’t know if everybody’s in 8-bit, two-dimensional, whatever.

Erika: No, that’s my generation. So, yeah, I actually have to wonder if they took some of those things from actual hells around the world, because there are some pretty frightening ones when you look at some of the ancient Mesoamerican hells, for example. You’re talking about the Maya, Aztecs, Inca, those kinds of folks. They had these multi-level underworlds that would have an obstacle course like that. So it was a lot like playing Mario Brothers or something.

Jason: It was just like Mario Brothers.

Erika: It was just like that. And so that’s what you faced after death. You had to get through this obstacle course, and you might have to swim rivers of blood and fight the jaguars. And I think in one of them there was a game that you had to play with really jagged, spiky balls that you threw back. It was a lot like a video game, essentially.

Jason: Essentially the hell, yeah. Well, Harry Houdini famously said that if anybody could come back from the other side, it would be him, because he’s this great escape artist. And we haven’t heard from him. But I’ve had a guest on the show who had a near-death experience, and I’ve read books about this, and there are some common occurrences, you could say, across the board. And this is science-backed. They did research on hundreds of people from different cultures, and they had linked all these common experiences to near-death experiences, but not everybody has them. Not to get too pop culture-y, but I know Al Pacino recently died and came back or something. He had some kind of medical emergency, and he’s like, there’s nothing there. There’s nothing there. So I don’t know Al Pacino’s story, but all of this is to say, before we dive into this list and have some fun with it, what do you think? What are your beliefs around this?

Why So Many Cultures Imagined Hell

Erika: Well, I think that there are a lot of commonalities in what people have imagined over time. I don’t personally believe in a literal hell, but I can definitely see why people throughout human history have come back again and again to this idea of not only an underworld that is linked to the afterlife, but also this place of judgment, what we think of now as hell, where you’re being punished for something wrong that you did in your life. I was a little surprised, actually, when I first started doing the research, to see how many different cultures have had something like that. Going back to ancient Egyptian times, looking at different cultures in Asia and around the world, not all, but many, many cultures have had some idea of a place of punishment or judgment. And personally, I think a lot of that comes back to people facing the same basic problems and grappling with life, death, and morality in similar ways.

So, for example, I always say everyone throughout history has faced the same challenge of teaching their kids to act right, even when no one’s looking. And so we teach our kids, if you’re bad, if you steal something, even if no one’s looking, it’s going to catch up with you in the end. You’re going to be judged later. And so I think a lot of us have come up with that same basic concept. We need a way to put stakes on our behavior, even if we don’t get caught doing something wrong. So I think a lot of cultures have come up with the same kind of solution, which is some kind of hell. And the idea that surely, even if someone is really horrible in this life, there’s going to be retribution at some point, and they’re going to have to pay for that. And I think that’s just really satisfying, honestly.

Jason: Like, the poor kids. I mean, you could just say, hey guys, no ice cream for you tonight if you do that. Instead they’re like, you’re going to burn in an eternal pit of fire.

Erika: Exactly.

Jason: Anyway, that’s a larger societal question we’re not going to get into, but damn, these poor kids. All right. Maybe hell is also getting a bunch of rewrite notes from your book editor. I’m not sure. It depends on who you’re talking to. But all right, let’s get into the places. And I’m going to give you fair warning, we’re going to circle back, because I have more questions on the science writing, and you have some interesting articles. For example, I want you to help us answer the question, if you died, would your dog eat you? This is an article that you wrote. So this is unrelated to all the book stuff, which is, by the way, Go to Hell: A Traveler’s Guide to Earth’s Most Otherworldly Destinations. So let’s go through this fun list you put together, pulling out seven places to experience hell on Earth. And then I have some questions about if our dogs are going to eat us when we die, and some other fun things that you’ve written about.

Erika: Great. Yeah. That article is probably my most popular ever. I did not anticipate that when I wrote it, but yes.

Jason: It’s a very catchy headline, I’ve got to say. Would your dog eat you if you died? Get the facts. All right. Did you put these in any sort of personal preferential order, or are they just sort of a hodgepodge list? Is it categorized, or is it just like, hey, I’m going to write down seven places, let’s rock through them?

Erika: I tried to go around the world and find some different kinds of places that I thought would be a little bit off the beaten path and that people might not already know about.

Jason: You’re speaking our language. How did you know our audience so well?

Erika: Yeah, exactly. So, for example, I know you already know about Pompeii, and that’s in the book. But I’m going to tell you about some places in Italy that people probably have not heard about.

Naples and the Phlegraean Fields, Italy

Jason: Okay, let’s get into it.

Erika: So if you want, we can start there. We can start in Italy. One of my favorite trips that I did for this book was to Naples, Italy, and some surrounding areas of Naples. And I feel like Naples is one of those underrated areas in Italy for a lot of American tourists in particular, because it’s a city where you think of pizza, and what else? A lot of people have told me that they’ve gotten off a cruise ship in Naples, had some pizza, and didn’t know what else to do. So I’m going to tell you a few other things you can do that I found really fascinating.

Even just walking around the city, this is a city that has such a deep connection to, I’m just going to say it, basically to death and the idea of hell and the underworld. It goes back all the way into the ancient Greek and Roman history of this place. You walk around Naples, and it’s these little winding streets, and if you’ve been to Naples, you know what I’m talking about. It has this feel of being steeped in history, and plenty of places that have a little bit of a creepy vibe.

One of my favorites was a particular church that I went to. This is called Purgatorio ad Arco in Naples, Italy, and this is right in downtown Naples. A lot of tourists probably walk right by it and never even realize it’s there. It was built in the 1600s. The congregation was dedicated to praying for souls in purgatory. So the whole church is decorated with skulls and skeletons and a lot of imagery of souls in purgatory. And it has this underground tomb where the remains of the poor, and even victims of plague, would be buried. And what happened was, over time, people started essentially adopting particular skulls or bones. They would pray for them to get out of purgatory. So again, this is a Catholic church, and they believed that when you died, you went to purgatory and you paid for your sins, and only then could you move on to heaven. And so they would pick a particular skull, for example, and dote on it. Women would come in and polish it, clean it, take care of it, and pray for the soul of that person. And because of this practice, they became known as the Neapolitan skull cult, or the cult of the dead. Not because it was a cult that was worshiping skulls, but because they had this preoccupation with skulls and with the human remains. The Catholic Church eventually said, you shouldn’t be doing this. It was a step too far in the veneration of human remains.

Jason: Stop polishing the skulls, guys. That’s enough.

Erika: Yeah. But that practice has still remained alive to some extent. Many of the remains are still there, and also in a nearby cemetery called Fontanelle. It’s really wonderful to tour around the church and see all of this imagery, all this history. And you can go down into the tombs, and they still have some of the remains, including a skull that is wearing a veil. It’s called Princess Lucia, and she is considered a kind of patron saint of young brides still today.

So that was a place that I really enjoyed going in Naples. But from there, you can walk around and see another church called Sansevero that lightens the mood a little bit. It takes you to basically a monument to heaven. It was a personal family chapel. And they have statues like the famous Veiled Christ statue, which is a beautiful statue. It’s Christ lying on a tomb with a veil over the face. And it looks so realistic that there were legends for many years that the guy who had built this chapel, who was rumored to be an alchemist, some kind of dark magician essentially, had used alchemy to petrify real cloth into stone for the veil. There are so many cool places like that. I really enjoyed walking around Naples and seeing that kind of history, more from the Christian era.

But then you can also leave Naples and do a short drive out to an area called the Phlegraean Fields, and there you can get even some of the older history. This is a volcanically active area. There’s what’s called the Solfatara, which is this giant gash in the earth. You’re driving down a little windy road, and there are orange groves, and it’s beautiful. And then all of a sudden you come across this giant smoking gash in the earth, and you can just pull off to the side of the road and go look at it. This is an area that has a lot of history as well. It’s probably one of the places that inspired Dante before writing the Inferno. It’s kind of strange. It’s a place you can walk right up to, but it’s got dangerous gases shooting out, and it’s been more or less active over time. So you can see all this steam rising from it and weird formations on the bottom.

There’s actually a little bit of a tragic history there, too. I can’t remember which year it was now, but in recent years you were able to actually tour that area and walk on it, and most of a family died when a little boy fell through the crust into a fumarole and his parents tried to rescue him. So you do not go into the Solfatara anymore, ever since that terrible accident happened. But it is still an amazing thing to see. You can just picture what Dante was seeing before he wrote the Inferno, and all of those nine circles of hell that he envisioned, which included a lot of these fiery, smoking landscapes, much like what he would have probably seen at that time.

Jason: Did you say this is a place that they know Dante visited and used as inspiration?

Erika: It’s believed that he did, because he was in that area, and some of the things that he wrote about sound like they were this place.

Jason: Because then you can look at works like the Sistine Chapel, or these places which were influenced by Dante, and just extrapolate that out, and you’re taking it back to this one physical location. It’s really fascinating.

Erika: Yeah, it is. And so I love seeing places like that, places that have inspired some of the things that we still know about today, things that have become important parts of culture or important parts of legend over time.

Ireland: The Birthplace of Halloween

Erika: So with that, I’d love to pick us up and transport us over to Ireland.

Jason: Look at this, a natural segue. I’m just going to hand this microphone over to you.

Erika: Can I just do that?

Jason: Please do that.

Erika: So let’s pick ourselves up and go to another bit of ancient Western civilization with Ireland. I think a lot of people may not realize how deep the ancient Irish history goes. It’s really fascinating, and there was a lot of interesting pagan legend and lore associated with Ireland. And it’s actually the birthplace of Halloween, so I think that’s a good next stop.

One place that I really loved that is associated with being the birthplace of Halloween is a cave in Ireland. People now call it Ireland’s Hell Cave. But back in the day, and I’m talking even thousands of years ago, it was called Oweynagat, or Cave of the Cats. And it’s this little unassuming hole in the ground in a field when you go there today. But once you climb inside, you shimmy in and turn to the left, and then it opens up into this big, deep crack in the earth, a tall, triangular-shaped cave. It’s pitch black in there once you turn this corner. And you can really imagine how ancient people believed that this was a portal to their version of what they called the Otherworld.

The Otherworld, or Tír na nÓg, was not a fiery hell, but a magical spiritual realm where there were gods and goddesses. It was eternal spring in many legends, and there was a whole cast of magical characters that lived in this Otherworld. And you didn’t even necessarily have to die to get there. You could pass through certain portals like this cave, Oweynagat, and some people would pass through and go see the Otherworld and then come back with all of these amazing stories about what was in it. And at the fall festival time called Samhain, which falls at the end of October for us today, it was believed that on that night the portal to the Otherworld would open up. And so through this particular little cave in Ireland, in County Roscommon, would emerge all of these magical creatures and goddesses and things like that.

One of them I love was called the Morrígan, a female figure who was a shapeshifter and would become a crow. And all of these creatures would fly across the earth, and that would usher in the beginning of winter. Some of the creatures were nefarious, others less so. But what would happen at Samhain was that the portal to the Otherworld would open up and all of these creatures would emerge. So you can imagine what Christians thought of this when Christianity first came to Ireland. That sounded pretty terrifying to them. And as they began to Christianize Ireland, the legend of the Otherworld, Tír na nÓg, and all of these creatures was reinterpreted as hell. The portal to the Otherworld, the cave of Oweynagat, was renamed as the Hell Cave, or Cave to Hell, and seen as much more of a scary place. And the festival of Samhain became Halloween.

Jason: It went through a rebrand. It went through a major rebrand.

Erika: Yeah. The Christians completely rebranded it. But they had a pretty resistant pagan population, and a lot of people didn’t want to become Christians. So they had to incorporate some of their traditions with the Christian tradition and keep some of those things alive. And so today, when you go there at Halloween time, you see festivals. There’s a town called Trim where I went to a wonderful festival, and it really blended a lot of those ancient traditions with the modern Halloween. You’d have a parade with the Morrígan and characters out of the ancient legends, and then you’d also have your devils and witches and things out of Christian Halloween tradition. It was really cool. I highly recommend Ireland, as the birthplace of Halloween, for a Halloween trip. It was really fantastic.

Jason: That’s great. What a unique site to go visit. Ireland’s a very busy place in terms of tourism, and you hear a lot of typical things, and this is atypical. So it’s nice to consider. People might want to check it out.

Erika: It’s got a lot of interesting history. It’s really cool. If you like archaeology and that kind of thing, it’s super cool. And the site in County Roscommon where you can see Oweynagat, the cave, is just one small part of a very large archaeological site that you can tour and learn all about these really cool ancient legends and traditions.

St. Patrick’s Purgatory

Erika: And then from there, of course, now Ireland is definitely known as a Christian country, with a lot of Catholic tradition. So if I can stay in Ireland for one minute, I’d love to mention another place.

Jason: Is this number three on the list, or is this a bonus?

Erika: This is a bonus within Ireland. I’m going to call Ireland a place.

Jason: Perfect.

Erika: You can travel by car pretty easily, and it’s a lovely drive from County Roscommon, seeing the Cave of the Cats, up to the area in northwest Ireland near Donegal. And you can see St. Patrick’s Purgatory, which is another fantastic hell-themed location in Ireland, this time getting into the Christian era. The legend at this site was that St. Patrick visited, and that Jesus came and spoke to him there. St. Patrick was saying, what are we going to do? These Irish are so troublesome, and we can’t convert them to Christianity. And Jesus said to him, you need to show them this pit here in this particular place, and it will take them to purgatory. If you show the people what lies in the afterlife if they don’t accept Christianity, they will see the error of their ways, basically.

So that’s the legend. The place became a monastery. It’s gorgeous. It’s located on an island in a large lake with beautiful scenery all around, and the monastery basically takes up the whole little island. People would make pilgrimages there and still do to this day. So it has an incredible history of hundreds and hundreds of years of pilgrimages by Catholics. Originally, part of the experience would be to lock yourself up in this pit. They had built a little structure over it. And people would have visions of being in hell, essentially. There are all these really crazy stories.

Jason: Like a sweat lodge kind of thing.

Erika: Yeah, like the Irish sweat lodge to hell. And so people would come out and report all of these visions that they had had. Now the pit’s been covered over, and it’s part of a pilgrimage site where people do the Stations of the Cross and so forth. But people still go there, and if you’re Catholic and you’re interested in that, you can go and do one-day or three-day pilgrimages there. But even if you’re not and you just want to see it, it’s a gorgeous site, and you can see all of the history and where this portal to purgatory stood.

Jason: And what’s the name of the pilgrimage?

Erika: The place is called St. Patrick’s Purgatory.

Jason: I mean, I guess if you’re having these visions and you go through that, at least afterwards, if it’s pretty intense, you could go find a Guinness and some fish and chips and maybe some good music. After some really intense, life-changing visions, Ireland can come through for you.

Erika: Absolutely. So if you’re interested in the pilgrimage, you can look it up as either St. Patrick’s Purgatory or, I’m going to get this, the Irish is really tough, Lough Derg. So Lough, like, you know, what they call a lake, and then Derg, D-E-R-G, is the name of the lake where this is. It’s often known by that name. Pilgrims go during the summer months, basically, and then the rest of the year anyone can visit, and you can arrange for a tour.

Jason: Love it. Ireland’s a great place to go hiking, too. I like hearing about these obscure pilgrimages around the world that you don’t hear too much about. We hear about all the big ones. All right, so we made it to Italy, we’re through Ireland. Where are we headed next? Are we going to go to Michigan on this trip? I did want to hear about the Michigan town.

Erika: We could. You know, I left the United States places off my list because I was trying to be really exotic and international. But we can throw it in as a bonus at the end. I’ve got so many great places in the U.S. too. It’s hard.

The Gates of Hell, Turkmenistan

Erika: Okay, let’s go all the way to Turkmenistan next. This is the Gates of Hell. If you want something fiery and truly hellish looking, you go out into the middle of the desert in Turkmenistan, and all of a sudden there’s this gaping hole that’s opened up in the earth, and it’s flaming, and it’s been on fire for decades. No one knows exactly what happened, but it’s thought that during natural gas exploration this pit got opened up and somehow got accidentally ignited, and it’s just been burning.

Jason: I think this is one that people may have come across before. This is probably the most famous example of this. It’s a giant hole in the ground that’s just constantly burning, right?

Erika: It’s just constantly burning. It’s a destination in and of itself. You can combine it with a tour and see the Silk Road and a lot of the really amazing history in that area, but it also is just a really cool destination on its own. You can go and camp on the side of this giant, flaming, 230-foot-wide pit. You really have to see it at night to get the full effect. That is one of the coolest places. I loved going to Ireland for Halloween, but I would love to do another Halloween trip to the Gates of Hell in Turkmenistan, because it’s just spectacular.

And I actually got to speak to probably the only person who’s been inside this pit, the Gates of Hell, an explorer named George Kourounis, who’s done work with National Geographic. He put on this whole silver heatproof suit. I said when they lowered him down into this pit, it looked like a foil-wrapped baked potato going down into the oven. And he went down inside it to collect some samples for scientific analysis. They were looking for novel microbes living in this area, which, of course, there are, because microbes do that. So that’s my little science lesson about the Gates of Hell. When they’ve been studying it, they found different microbes that are able to live there. And he talked about that experience. You look at this thing and it’s just a flaming pit. He had to find a place to land, and then he had to get lowered down on a rope, not knowing for sure whether he would break through the crust and end up falling into a flaming pit below the flaming pit.

Jason: I’m not qualified for that job.

Erika: No, I just want to go and look over the edge. I think that’s probably okay for me, rather than going inside. But I thought it was very cool that at least one person has actually been inside the Gates of Hell.

Kawah Ijen, Indonesia

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. All right, from there, let’s see. Would you like to move on to Indonesia?

Erika: Okay, so another fiery feature in Indonesia. I don’t know how many people have heard of this volcano. It’s called Kawah Ijen. And what’s really unusual about this particular volcano is, you know, you picture a volcano, you picture orange lava flowing down the sides. What’s really different about this one, and makes it, I would say, spookier, is that there’s so much sulfur gas coming out of it that the sulfur gas ignites and rolls down the side as blue flames. So you’ve got a volcano with blue flames rolling down the sides, particularly at the crater at the top.

You can hike up to the top, and there are tours you can do, so this is something that a regular person could do. It’s not as adventurous as it might sound. You can actually climb to the top and see the blue flames rolling down this crater at night. It’s another one of those experiences where you go in the evening and see it at night with the flames rolling down. This volcano is gorgeous, but there are also a lot of sulfur gases coming out. And the interesting thing about it is there’s mining for sulfur on the volcano. So you’ve got people who work there, who actually climb this mountain every day and come back down carrying big loads of sulfur on their backs, which is a really dangerous job. But it’s also really interesting to see, and to learn about the volcano and see that area. That is on the island of Java in Indonesia.

New Zealand’s Beautiful Hellscapes

Jason: Okay. Where are we headed next?

Erika: We’ve got three more stops on this tour, by the way. Let’s go to New Zealand. I love New Zealand.

Jason: New Zealand is so gorgeous. I don’t think people think about New Zealand as hell. They’re thinking about all the Lord of the Rings, paradise.

Erika: Exactly. The paradise side of it. But let me tell you. New Zealand has a big North Island and a South Island. The South Island is what a lot of people think of when they think of the Lord of the Rings and that very mountainous landscape. When you go to the North Island, you can go to an area along the northern coast, and it’s very volcanic, but completely different from the South Island. And what I loved was that the New Zealand versions of hellscapes are gorgeous. You’ve got all this volcanic activity. There’s a town called Rotorua that is also known as the Sulphur City. You go there, and it’s amazing to see how people live in such close proximity to all of these volcanic features. Even right in the middle of their downtown, they’ve got a little park with steaming fumaroles and bubbling mud. It’s really pretty. I’m not making it sound pretty, but it’s a very pretty park with all of this volcanic activity.

Jason: It’s like when you go to Yellowstone and you’re seeing these boiling…

Erika: Yeah, exactly. It’s kind of like going to Yellowstone.

Jason: Beautiful colors.

Erika: Yeah. But then there’ll be a little danger sign that says, danger, boiling mud. If you stick your hand in here, you’re going to have nothing left except bone, maybe. So that’s very cool. And you can go and soak your feet in little natural hot springs at the park. But then there are several different beautiful parks near there, and the two that I highly recommend to people are Wai-O-Tapu Scenic Reserve and Waimangu Volcanic Valley, both of which were spectacular.

One of my favorites was Frying Pan Lake, which was an enormous lake. You’ve got steaming cliffs behind it and this cloud of steam that continually rolls across the lake. Just absolutely stunning. You could stand there all day staring at it. And then there were the colorful features, sort of like at Yellowstone, except you would have a big lake. There was one area called the Artist’s Palette, where it really looks like an artist’s palette. It was blues, greens, reds, oranges, yellows, all across this lake area. And then there was a neon green lake called the Devil’s Bath. It’s well named. It looks like the devil’s bathtub. It’s just this little pit, and I can’t even describe the shade of green. You have to see it. It’s electric green. So there are so many great places. I like to say that New Zealand has all of these hellscape-type features, but they’re also gorgeous. They’re also beautiful to see.

And then you can top it off by going to some of the glowworm caves of New Zealand. These are pretty common on the North Island. One of the biggest ones is called Waitomo. Glowworms are actually a bit of a misnomer. They’re technically glow maggots, because these are little larvae of flies.

Jason: Another great rebrand, because nobody wants to see glow maggots, right?

Erika: Exactly. But the glowworms are so cute. Much cuter. So you go into the cave, and there’s a little river through the cave. You get in a boat, and then all of a sudden you’re surrounded by all of these little blue-green sparkling lights all around you. Those are the bioluminescent glowworms, or glow maggots, if you will, that live in these caves. And that’s only found in New Zealand. It’s a really eerie but really beautiful experience. It’s something that you can’t really see anywhere else in the world.

Jason: Did you travel to some of these places just for the book? Or were you just like, I’m going to take my entire advance and spend it on this?

Erika: I was lucky enough to get a little bit of travel budget. So all of the places that we’ve talked about in Ireland and Italy and New Zealand, I have been to, and all fantastic.

Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela

Erika: And then one that is still on my bucket list. I’m going to take us to South America for one of our last stops. Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. I’m really hoping that Venezuela will be easier to travel to in the future, because this is the most electric place on Earth. It has the most lightning strikes of anywhere. Now you might say, well, why do I want to go somewhere where I get hit by lightning? Well, you’re not going to get hit by lightning, because what you’re going to do is watch this lightning show from across the lake. It’s a spot where a river comes down into a lake, and because of the peculiar atmospheric conditions at that site, every night you essentially get an enormous lightning show. It is literally the most electric place on Earth. If you are into nature photography and that kind of thing, the photographs that people come back with from this place are just spectacular. So that’s also one of those off-the-beaten-path things where you can witness the power of nature.

Jason: But from a safe distance. Spectacular. I would love that.

Erika: Yeah. That’s one that I really want to do.

Tsingy de Bemaraha, Madagascar

Erika: Okay, so now we’re going to go all the way over to Madagascar.

Jason: There are so many reasons to go to Madagascar. That’s one of the top ones on my bucket list.

Erika: One that I thought a lot of people might not have heard about, and that definitely has a great hellscape, is called the Tsingy de Bemaraha. This is an area with a bizarre rock formation that creates basically a landscape of enormous spikes. People have called it the devil’s obstacle course. It’s dense, almost like a forest, because these sharp rocks are towering above you. If you’re less adventurous, you can navigate some of this from the ground and see it, and there’s all kinds of cool wildlife, like lemurs that live up on these stone pillars. But what you can do that’s really cool and adventurous is go on tours where you basically go on hanging bridges and see it all from above. You’ll be clipped on with carabiners. A lot of people have called these some of the scariest bridges in the world, because you’re just suspended over these spider-looking rocks.

Jason: Hanging on a…

Erika: Yeah. So you get to dangle over these giant spikes. But when you look down, you get to see all of the lemurs. It’s actually really gorgeous.

Jason: And if the rope breaks, you’re impaled for sure, right?

Erika: If the rope breaks, yes, you might be impaled. You will definitely not like it.

Jason: You see some things that we do as adventure travelers, and we’re like, who thought of dangling people?

Erika: I know. I want to know who built these bridges. How do you do that? I mean, granted, I want to dangle over those things, but still. I’m their target market, I guess, in some ways. They say it’s pretty safe. You do have some safety gear. But that’s one that I have not done yet. It’s on my bucket list. I really want to see it. And after seeing the photos and the wildlife and everything there, I think it’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see something like that. Someplace that looks completely otherworldly.

Jason: Erika, you’re a great tour guide. Nice work. I can see the passion and feel the passion. And I love how you’ve combined your expertise as a science writer with your interest in the macabre and mystical and legend and all that, and then also wrapped in the travel aspect, the exoticness of being able to check out some off-the-beaten-path places. And this is just a sampling from the book, right? Go to Hell: A Traveler’s Guide.

Erika: Absolutely. There are so many destinations.

Jason: So if you want to go deeper, check out the book.

Bonus: Hell, Michigan

Jason: Because when I got the email when we were talking about this interview, I was thinking about some of these places that you described, like fire in the ground, that sort of thing. But then there was Hell, Michigan. There’s a town named Hell, Michigan, which I referred to a little bit earlier. I imagine there’s not a fiery pit there. Was that included in the book?

Erika: It’s actually a very charming small town.

Jason: There you go. It was just like, why not put this in the book? I mean, it works, right?

Erika: It works. I tried to arrange the book according to places that I called Portals to the Underworld. Those are the places associated with legends and lore, and many of them were seen as literal portals to the underworld. And then I’ve got Hells on Earth, which is your hellscapes, places that have inspired our visions of hell. And I put Hell, Michigan into that because they’ve basically taken their name and run with it. They’ve turned it into a hell-themed destination.

Jason: They’re leaning in.

Erika: They’re leaning in to making it a literal hell on Earth. But it’s actually a fun little small town. You can go there and be mayor of Hell for a day. You can buy all of the hell-themed tchotchkes. Like I said, it’s a very small town, so there are really only a few places to go, and most of them are owned by one guy named John Colone. He’s this great guy who loves a pun and has really developed the town around the hell theme. So they do festivals. Of course, Halloween time is big for them. It’s a great time to go visit Hell. You can also go in the winter and get the famous hell-frozen-over effect. And of course, I had to get my picture taken in front of the roadside sign to Hell. You can go in the winter when there are icicles coming off.

Jason: It’s almost like one giant roadside attraction in a way.

Erika: It really is.

Jason: It’s an actual functioning town.

Erika: Yeah, exactly. There’s basically a saloon, a gift shop, ice cream and putt-putt. There’s even a wedding chapel, so if you’re so inclined, you can even get married in Hell. When I went, I got to see a wedding in Hell, and the bride and groom were dressed up. Everyone had on either angel halos or devil horns, and they really played up the whole theme. So it was a lot of fun. It’s very family friendly. Nothing too scary, actually, in that Hell.

Jason: They really ran with it. Isn’t it funny, and maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems like every town like that, there’s one person that owns almost every business in the town. Why? It’s just one super entrepreneurial, mom-and-pop kind of person.

Erika: Yeah, it’s very mom and pop.

Jason: Owns the mini golf thing, owns that museum. It’s like, what?

Erika: Yeah. Well, in his case, John has really made that town what it is. Apparently it had gotten a little seedy back in the day. It’s still a popular place for motorcyclists to come through when doing tours, because it’s near Ann Arbor, and it’s pretty. There are lots of lakes in that area. So motorcyclists come through. But apparently it had gotten a bit of a reputation for hell-raising back in the day. Now it’s all been cleaned up and made much more family friendly.

Would Your Dog Eat You If You Died?

Jason: Nice. Well, thanks for taking the time to put together this list. I mentioned at the top we’re going to ask you about a couple of these science articles you’ve written before you go.

Erika: Sure.

Jason: Will our dogs and cats eat us when we die? If we have a pet in the house and we die all of a sudden, washing dishes, whatever it is.

Erika: Right. That article was actually inspired when a friend of mine who lives alone and is an animal lover asked me, is this true, or is this an urban legend, that they’ll find someone dead in their house and their cat or their dog has consumed them?

Jason: You’re like, oh, this is dark. I love this. Let’s get into it. The cute dog eats the human. All right.

Erika: Yeah. I was like, that’s a really good question. Is that a real thing? And so I started looking into the forensic science literature and what medical examiners have seen. And the short answer is, yeah, your dog might eat you if you die. It’s not as uncommon as one might have thought, although nobody tracks it, so you can’t really put any numbers on how often this happens. But there are certainly a number of reports in the forensic literature, and medical examiners have told me, yeah, sure, I see that. Usually cats get the bad rap for eating people. I don’t know why. People just think cats are mean, I guess. But most of the forensic reports were actually dogs.

Jason: And cats are just… well, now there are some cat people.

Erika: I don’t know. I’m a cat person. I have two cats. One of them, I think, would definitely eat me if I died.

Jason: Nobody’s going to look at their pets the same after this conversation.

Erika: Yeah. But you know, I was surprised. I thought dog owners were going to hate me after I wrote this article. And I was surprised how many people wrote to me and said, you know what, if I died and my dog was trapped in my house, I would want them to eat me. I would want them to survive. And I thought, well, how generous of you. But actually, what was kind of disturbing was that in most of the cases, it’s not just happening because the animal’s hungry. Often it’s just stress. They’re freaked out, and they start biting, trying to wake you up or whatever. And then it moves on from there.

Jason: That makes it feel a little better, that they’re trying to wake you up.

Erika: Well, yeah. I actually ended up feeling very, very bad for the dogs involved in this. Think how stressful that would be, that your person suddenly…

Jason: Yeah, I know. We were making a little light of it, but you’re right.

Erika: I know, but poor doggies. They’re just trying.

Jason: For sure. They love you. They just love you too much.

The Five-Second Rule

Jason: Okay, you had another one I’m curious about. I did read the dog one, and we can link up to your website, by the way, where people can find the book and everything too. But I didn’t read some of these, because I just wanted you to give me the answer. The one that caught my eye is the five-second rule. True? The five-second rule meaning when you drop food on the ground and you’re like, oh, five-second rule, I can still eat that. I always apply the five-second rule unless I’m in the bathroom or something. Then it’s a no-second rule, you know?

Erika: Yeah.

Jason: But science has an answer.

Erika: Science has an answer. People have done the tests. Extensive research reveals no five-second rule. It’s contaminated the instant it touches something. So, yeah, sorry. You’re just gross when you pick something up off the floor and eat it. But you know what? Most of the time, unless you’ve been flinging raw chicken juice around your kitchen or something like that, you’re probably not going to pick up anything too bad. But yeah, I would watch out in the kitchen or the bathroom.

Superpowered and Wrapping Up

Jason: Thank you. Such sage advice, words of wisdom. I appreciate you coming on and having some fun with this, putting together the list. Congrats on the book. That’s a tough thing to do, write a book.

Erika: It is. I’m working on my third book now for National Geographic. This one is tentatively titled Superpowered, and it’s going to be back to my science roots. It’s going to be about the science of real-world superpowers. So amazing abilities that people have, where they come from, and whether we can get them.

Jason: Okay. So you’ve got to come back on the podcast for that one.

Erika: All right. It’s fun. And I’m hoping to travel around and meet some very interesting people in the course of that as well.

Jason: Okay. My only superpower is eating chocolate before noon. Does that count?

Erika: Are you really excellent at it?

Jason: Please come back on for that one when you get to that stage, because I’d love to hear a bit more about those adventures, and especially the travel aspect, traveling around and meeting these people. That sounds like an incredibly fascinating project to be involved with. So wishing you the best of luck with this book and with the next one, and I look forward to doing this again at some point.

Erika: Absolutely. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Jason: Thanks for your time. Take care.

Jason: There you have it. I want to thank Erika for stopping by the show. Again, the book is Go to Hell: A Traveler’s Guide to Earth’s Most Otherworldly Destinations, published by National Geographic. I was excited to have her on. She gave us a great tour. And I do have to apologize. I’m sorry that you had to find out that your pet might eat you if you die. I’m really sorry about that. But I am going to wrap this up with a quote that might make you feel better, to try to redeem myself a little bit here. One last reminder: don’t forget to sign up over at zerototravel.com/newsletter. Let me know what kind of content you want. Do you dig these global tour type destination lists that we have sometimes on the show? Is there a certain guest you would like me to have, a topic you want me to cover? That’s how I can find out, by you communicating with me. So please get in touch and let me know if there’s anything I can do. This is a community-powered show, after all, and I’d love your feedback. Okay, here is a quote from Andy Rooney, funny guy, who said, “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next time. I hope you enjoyed the Halloween spooktacular. Have a wonderful day. Peace and love to you. Cheers.