Save the Date: May 30th marks the return of International Obscura Day!

Obscura Day is the real-world manifestation of Atlas Obscura - a day of expeditions, back-room tours, unusual access and discovery in your hometown. More than just cataloging the curious, wondrous and overlooked places of the world, we'd like to encourage you to actually go out and explore them. Special events will be taking place at unusual locations across the globe as we highlight obscure collections, eclectic museums, hidden wonders and curiosities near and afar to show that the same sense of wonder invoked by exotic travels can be found close to home if you know where to look.

Stay tuned, we'll begin releasing this year's lineup soon! In the meantime, if you would like to help us organize an excursion or event near you we'd love to hear from you. Email megan@atlasobscura.com to get involved!

Master Falconer, Vahe' Alaverdian, lure stooping in the high desert with the Obscura Society LA (Photo by Falcon Force, LLC)

Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart's signatures on The Fliers and Explorers Globe (Photo by Luke Spencer)

On the second floor of a nondescript office building in downtown Brooklyn, behind a plain wooden door at the end of the hall, you’ll find one of the world’s most wonderful artifacts of exploration and adventure: the Fliers and Explorers Globe.

The crowning glory of the now-modest headquarters of the American Geographical Society, the globe is just a standard schoolroom model. But it has been signed by virtually every famous aviator and explorer in modern history. From Amelia Earhart to Charles Lindbergh to Sir Edmund Hillary, the heroes not only signed their names but also drew their routes upon the globe.

The office of the American Geographic Society in Brooklyn. (Photo by Luke Spencer)

The tradition of signing the globe originated in 1929 with John H. Finley, then both president of the American Geographical Society and editor-in-chief of the New York Times. Often Finley himself would go down to the docks of Lower Manhattan to personally greet the returning adventurers and have them trace out their routes across the Earth.

The purpose was, as the Society puts it, to create “a priceless and unique symbol of humanity’s unquenchable drive to explore the universe.” There are currently 82 signers on the irreplaceable globe, and the tradition is ongoing, with AGS adding a new explorer every year. Recent signers include Russian Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who in 1965 was the first human to walk in space. This year’s signer will be film director James Cameron, for his unparalleled achievement in reaching, in his one-man submarine, the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench.

To find such a treasure virtually undetected in a small office in Brooklyn is quite peculiar.
But the American Geographical Society wasn’t always so obscure. At one time, it lived in a magnificent neo-classical building in Washington Heights, and was one of the celebrated institutions of its age. In 1851, Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to find the Northwest Passage had been missing for four years. Following Lady Franklin’s desperate pleas for help, a group of likeminded adventurers came together in New York to form the American Geographical Society, with the purpose of funding and carrying out a rescue mission to the Arctic.

From the very beginning, the Society was made up of an equal mix of scholars, businessmen, and government officials. The mission to find Lord Franklin was unsuccessful, but the Society grew in stature and influence. Current executive director John Konarski III explains that, “in the 1850s educated people in New York would get together after dinner to discuss geography. It was important at the time, especially with the railways heading west, and the common interest of railway company members who served on the board.”

For decades, the Society was the principal map resource of the United States. The office displays a 10-foot long photograph of the Trans Continental Excursion of geographers who traveled to the West Coast and back in 1912, mapping the country. Following the 1918 Armistice, Woodrow Wilson prepared for the Paris Peace Conference at the Society headquarters, drawing upon its unparalleled collection of maps and data. Until the end of World War II the AGS contractually made all the maps for the government, and kept a permanent staff of over 80. But that ended after the war.

As the government revenues disappeared, the AGS became dominated by academia and found itself heading towards bankruptcy. The old headquarters was sold in 1970 and the Society eventually found itself in the small rental office in Brooklyn and on the verge of disappearing into history.

After visiting the globe, my next port of call was Broadway and 156th Street in Washington Heights, and the ornate limestone original home of the Society. Part of Charles P. Huntington’s Beaux-Arts masterpiece, the eight-building Audubon Terrace complex, the building was as grand as any of New York’s museums, with giant classical columns and a rooftop frieze decorated with Marco Polo, Vasco de Gama, and other great explorers. The building housed the Society’s archive of atlases, journals, and photographs, the world’s largest collection of maps, and the Fliers and Explorers Globe.

Sir Edmund Hillary's signature on The Fliers and Explorers Globe (Photo by Luke Spencer)

Since 1970, the building has been home to Boricua College, a centre of Puerto Rican education. But the main entrance is still carved with the name American Geographical Society. Above the door is a huge stone globe bearing the society motto “Ubique,” meaning “everywhere.” The giant brass doors are magnificently decorated with oversized compasses. Inside the college, remnants of the old Society are everywhere; from the original elevators stamped with the AGS initials, to the cast iron stairs with globe balustrades. In one of the schoolrooms on the ground floor, the back wall is dominated with a giant map of South America, a leftover from the Society’s effort to map the entire world.

 
The original headquarters of the American Geographical Society (Photo by Luke Spencer)

It’s sad that such a magnificent organization, with such an incredible collection, has nearly disappeared. Back in Brooklyn, Konarski explains that the “nature of old organizations is that they acquire a lot but are not necessarily skilled in dealing with it.”

The strangest and most poignant aspect of the Fliers and Explorers Globe is that no one ever sees it. No one sees the route of Wiley Post, who in 1933 was the first to fly around the world; the signatures and paths of Robert Peary, the first man to the North Pole and Roald Amundsen, first to the South Pole. “It sits in my office and no one sees it,” says Konarski. “I’d like to get it into the public.” Under his stewardship, the Society is already beginning to show signs of revival, pioneering work in geospatial analysis. Plans include a move back into Manhattan, this time to the redeveloping South Street Seaport neighborhood, back to where the Globe’s originator, Finley, would greet the returning explorers.

Wiley Post's signature on The Fliers and Explorers Globe (Photo by Luke Spencer)

And what of its original archives? After the Audubon headquarters was sold in 1970, the prodigious collection was presented to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library on permanent loan. Today, the collection of over 1.3 million artifacts is housed in its own wing, where it is actively curated and added to. Like the Fliers globe, this incredible resource is hardly known about outside of geographical academia. It contains such treasures as the 1452 Mappa Mundi by Venetian artographer Giovanni Leardo, the original manuscript maps of Captain James Cook, more than 10,000 atlases, and some of the oldest globes in the world. Armed with an introduction from Konarski, I’m heading there next…

Visiting the Baghdad Museum website is now a journey into a black screen that reads, simply:

This statement is quite literal. Recent weeks have been painful for anyone with even a passing interest in art and culture—a melee of irreversible destruction, intent on wiping out stores of cultural artifacts in Syria and Iran. Using heavy equipment, explosives, and a vast army of disciples and paid laborers, the Islamic State has engaged in iconoclasm at a truly alarming pace and scope; many academics there will soon be nothing left. Centuries-old books: burned. Priceless statues in the Mosul museum: jackhammered. A few weeks ago, the artifact-rich Nimrud was bulldozed. Last summer, the Tomb of Jonah was rigged with explosives and blown sky-high.

This seems a natural progression for religious extremists who’ve seen diminishing shock returns on each new beheading. Destroying these icons can be viewed as the next stage of a campaign to upset squeamish Westerners (and recruit new soldiers). Reading about it in many mainstream outlets, it would seem this behavior is without precedent—only a group as singularly savage as ISIS could plumb these depths. Right?

But a quick browse of history, even just the last hundred years, reveals many other incidents of art on the pyre.

“If there’s one thing I can stress above all else, it’s how very unsurprising the Islamic State’s actions are here,” says James Noyes, author of The Politics of Iconoclasm and one of the world’s foremost experts on destroying religious art.

For instance, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s, a call to “Sweep Away all Monsters and Demons” led to mass destruction of buildings, books and paintings. The Nazis torched thousands of works of “degenerate art” (read: Cubist or Surrealist) in the late ‘30s. During the Bosnian War of the '90s, countless mosques and museums were intentionally targeted and decimated, effectively razing the region’s rich cultural and artistic heritage.

On surface, these purges can seem like bullying on a grand scale, a simple expression of dominance by an aggressor. But there is almost always a grander justification; the destruction is defended with lofty ideology (political and/or religious). During the mid-20th century, China’s Maoist regime destroyed artwork that appeared sympathetic to bourgeois capitalist values. In its place came grandiose portraits of farmers and laborers, operas that focus on revolution, sculptures of Mao himself. It’s a special brand of warfare.

Noyes places Islamic State’s recent smashfest within longstanding dogmatic traditions. This is not the first time Muslim hardliners have waged war on cultural artifacts; in fact, many of these very same shrines have been targeted in the past. The destruction was perhaps less thorough—jackhammers and bulldozers have lent ISIS an unmatched level of efficiency—but the intent is certainly not new. These days, iconoclasm has become a synonym for innovation, but the word itself comes from Greek, meaning "image-breaking." It is a familiar refrain for many world religions: edicts against worshipping golden calves, of worshipping man’s creations instead of a holy Creator.

(Above: A video still of the Tomb of Jonah's destruction late last July.)

In particular, Noyes likens current ISIS actions to the Calvinist Beeldensturm (“statue storm”) rampages of the late 1500s. As Catholicism’s popular support waned, unruly Protestant mobs took to the countryside. These true believers had long been persecuted for their views; their iconoclasm voiced some pent-up rage.Nicholas Sander, a 16th century religious scholar, paints the scene:

“They tore the curtains, dashed in pieces the carved work of brass and stone, brake the altars, spoilt the clothes and corporesses, wrested the irons, conveyed away or brake the chalices and vestiments, pulled up the brass of the gravestones, not sparing the glass and seats which were made about the pillars of the church for men to sit in ... they trod under their feet and (horrible it is to say!) shed their stinking piss upon it.”

Of course, the Calvinists did not have YouTube in their arsenal. Destroying your enemy’s icons has long made for a powerful statement, but the impact of that statement depended on how well you could broadcast it. In 2015, high-def videos of your destruction can be sent around the world in mere moments. “What really makes these ISIS attacks memorable is the new media,” says Sam Hardy, who researches crimes against cultural property at the City College of London. “It’s consciously designed to provoke a reaction, with the close-ups and the slow motion…like a low-end Hollywood thriller.”

In this sense, Islamic State’s motives morph into something less holy. If these were purely devotional acts (of destruction), they could surely be privately performed without sharable video links. These acts serve a dual purpose, at the juncture of devotion and provocation. And what of reports that – instead of being destroyed—some of these artifacts are ending up on the black market, used to fund Islamic State’s operating costs? Noyes says that this information is being brandished like a propaganda saber. “It’s like when you hear that some Islamic group’s women are wearing French lingerie under their traditional garments, or that they all watch Game of Thrones,” he says,” It discredits their principles, makes them look like hypocrites.”

It does seem, though, that there is validity to those stories; Hardy verifies that some smaller objets d’art are indeed being pawned by ISIS into the underground economy. But he doesn’t see this as a conflict of Islam State’s principles, such as they are. “If selling some of these items, which hold no value (to ISIS), can be used to further their larger aims, it could be argued these sales do not violate their own principles.” Indeed, the Nazis also profiteered from confiscated art; they tended to destroy only the less-valuable paintings.

Worth noting too, are the types of objects being targeted here. Attacks on Mosul churches, including their attendant shrines and images of Christ and Mary, fall very much in line with Islamic iconoclast. But destroying secular museum artifacts and archaeological sites is something different. “These are not objects of active worship,” says Noyes. “But they do matter a lot to the international community, to UNESCO, to the West. Here ISIS know that they can strike at the soft underbelly of the West.”

Just how effective are these tactics? Or, really, how do you even measure effectiveness here? If it’s simply a question of disturbing Western complacency, then mission accomplished. Of course, televised beheadings were doing a pretty good job of unsettling the West; it’s a debatable point whether this is an escalation. But perhaps effectiveness is determined by unswerving allegiance to principle, by the fullest expression of belief.

While history has not looked kindly upon perpetrators of cultural destruction and iconoclasm, that doesn’t detract from each act’s resonance. No one could argue ISIS (or the Khmer Rouge, or the Calvinists) didn’t walk their talk. There was only one opportunity to blow up the Tomb of Jonah, to bulldoze Nimrud, and only one group can say they carried it off. Iconoclasm, in its original meaning, isn't Steve Jobs redesigning a phone. It's the destruction of a culture.

“Hair Apparent” hair salons. “Legal Grounds” coffee shops. “Dew Drop Inn” motels. America’s business owners can’t seem to resist a good pun. The same goes for vacation homes; a house at the beach without a clever name is a dereliction of duty, making you suspect that the owners are lazy, or worse, unimaginative, letting their chance to plant a flag go by.

 (Wordplay on Tybee Island, Georgia. Photo by Anna Marlis Burgard.)

My notes and photo collections from the Islands of America grand tour are peppered with examples of punny vacation house signage, although the practice seems more common east of the Mississippi. There are cottages named “Heart & Sol” and “Om Sweet Home” on Tybee Island, Georgia and homophones like “Daze Off” and “Pair o' Dice” on Captiva Island, Florida. Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island has a “Summersalt” with a view of Newport’s famous Cliff Walk mansions. Emerald Isle, North Carolina offers “Vitamin Sea” to its collection, and, courtesy of author David Sedaris and his humorously documented, decades-long wish for a family home there, “Sea Section.”

(More from Tybee Island. Photo by Anna Marlis Burgard.)

My fascination with these names goes back to family vacations in Ocean City, Maryland. Through the dreary days of late winter I’d wait for the Caine Real Estate booklet to arrive; once it finally landed in the mailbox I ran off to pour over the listings. I’d roll the rentals’ names over in my imagination: “Beachcomber,” “The Fins”—and the one that included my name, “Tropicanna.”

Should I ever take the plunge into vacation home possession, I’m all set for the sign maker: “Rest Ashored.” Nothing beats being lulled to sleep by the sound of the surf after a happily exhausting day of sun, wind and waves. As winter persists in much of the country, many of us dream of a welcoming stretch of beach, and indulge the fantasy of owning a piece of it. What will you name yours? 

(Picture above is from a house in Rhode Island. Photo by Anna Marlis Burgard.)

Island hopper Anna Marlis Burgard is the creative force behind hundreds of illustrated books and gift products and is the author and principal photographer for Islands of America: A River, Lake and Sea Odyssey. As part of a monthly "United Islands of America" series, she's sharing some of the more obscure destinations she's discovered on her journeys to more than 80 islands in 22 states.

The EVE Project Earthship in Taos (photo by Sarah Richter / Flickr)

It's perhaps not surprising that a structure called "Earthship" has been around since the '70s—and that, like similarly vintaged trends of Birkenstocks and juicing, they never quite died. They only faded away. 

Earthships are designed to be entirely off-the-grid and self-sustaining, constructed from reclaimed and recycled materials and making use of natural resources. The term originates with architect Mike Reynolds, a pioneer of "radically sustainable living," who coined it in 1971.  He designed his "Earthship Biotecture" house out of recycled materials in 1972, and he has been refining the concept ever since. 

They tend to be horeshoe-shaped to maximize natural light, using windows and skylights with integrated shades to improve cross-ventilation and help regulate heat, and are often built underground where the temperature has less fluctuation. Many include a principle glass wall facing the equator to optimize solar exposure, thick external walls made of rammed-earth tires to regulate temperature, and internal walls constructed from a honeycomb of recycled cans. They also include intricate systems to collect, harvest, and purify water, with greywater for flushing and blackwater for compost, as well as wind turbines, deep-cycle batteries, and a new invention called a Power Organizing Module to convert stored wind and solar energy for AC use.

Although Reynolds has faced some significant legal and professional challenges, his designs continue to be embraced, and there are now Earthships all over the world, from Europe to Africa. Here are several fascinating examples.  

Greater World Earthship Community, New Mexico

One of the Earthship in the Greater World Community (photo by Biodiesel33 / Wikimedia)

A few miles west of Taos sits the 600-plus-acre Earthship Community, started by Mike Reynolds and Earthship Biotecture. There's room in the community for 130 homes and 200 people, and each home sits on an acre or more of land.

Phoenix: Another Greater World Earthship (photo by SMTB1963 / Flickr)

The community includes more than 300 acres of shared land, and is fully off the grid, using exclusively solar and wind power. Some of the homes, such as the Phoenix, can be rented out by the night. Greater World is very much a work in progress, with a projected 20-year plan to reach completion.

Brighton Earthship, U.K.

Brighton Earthship (photo by Dominic Alves / Flickr)

Built in 2007 by Earthship Biotecture and the Low Carbon Trust, the Brighton Earthship, one of only two in the U.K., serves as a community center for agricultural and horticultural nonprofit consortium Stanmer Organics. The building is constructed from used tires, sustainably sourced wood, and adobe. It was designed to maximize passive solar gain, and features composting toilets, solar-heated water, a wind turbine, photo-voltaics, and many other green features. Brighton Permaculture Trust uses the Earthship as a venue for many of its classes. 

Kinney Earthship, Alberta, Canada

 Kinney Earthship (photo by Green Energy Futures / Flickr)

The 1,800-square-foot Kinney Earthship is the home of Dawn and Glen Kinney. More than 12,000 cans and 800 tires were used in its construction, which took place over one summer. Mike Reynolds was an advisor and helper on the project, bringing a dozen workers and thirty volunteers from New Mexico to help complete it, along with several of the couple's six adult children. The Kinney Earthship generates all its own electricity, grows much of the family's food, and recycles all greywater. 

Earthship Fife, Scotland

Earthship Fife Visitor Center (photo by Tom Parnell / Flickr) 

Scotland's first Earthship, built in 2004, is home to the nonprofit Sustainable Communities Initiative, which works with communities on social and environmental sustainability. SCI's founder Paula Cowie wrote her dissertation on Earthships, then fundraised to hire Mike Reynolds and his crew to help her build it. Earthship Fife generates all its own electricity, has a rooftop rainwater-catching system, and treats all its sewage in contained planter beds. SCI also tried to spearhead the creation of a twelve-house Earthship community in Fife, but the proposal was rejected.

Casa Llanta, San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

Earthship in El Carizal (photo by Devin Poolman / Flickr)

Casa Llanta, or "tire house," is the first Earthship in Nicaragua, built in 2009 by a group of ex-pat Californians. Earthships make sense in a rural area like San Juan Del Sur, where there is limited access to water, energy is extremely expensive, and long blackouts are a regular occurrence. Casa Llanta is built into the earth, making it adaptable to the country's varying temperatures, and an extensive rainwater-catchment system stores excess water from the rainy season for use when things are dry. The Earthship builders worked with Nicaraguans in the community, sharing energy- and water-saving techniques that can be implemented to help local residents become more self-sustaining.

Project Aardskip, Orania, South Africa

Project Aardskip (photo by Ludwig.everson / Wikimedia)

The small town of Orania is one of the most eco-focused in South Africa, making it a natural home for an Earthship. Project Aardskip was designed by Christiaan van Zyl, one of South Africa's foremost sustainable architecture experts. Since the climate there is very hot, Aardskip is constructe from earthbags, insulated with wool, recycled polystyrene, and plastic soda bottles, and designed with overhung roofing, so as not to let in any sunlight between November and March. The building is still in development; when completed it will be the largest earthbag Earthship in the world. It will consist of a residence, a bed-and-breakfast, and an information and training center to teach other South Africans the principles of sustainable building design.

A Bhutanese guide peeks into the main shrine room of the Chagri Monastery, about 10 miles north of Thimphu, Bhutan. Chagri is one of many places where, according to legend, Guru Rinpoche subjugated unruly demons and opponents of the Buddhist teachings. (Photo: Jonathan Mingle.)

Over the course of a dozen years of working and rambling around the Himalaya, I’ve been followed by a certain pair of eyes. They belong to Padmasambhava, the meditating mystic-missionary-magician who brought Buddhist teachings from India to Tibet in the 8^th century CE and perhaps best known as Guru Rinpoche.

Like some kind of tantric Tyler Durden, Guru Rinpoche traveled up and down the Himalaya getting into scrapes, setting up shop, leaving durable tales told in hushed tones by the locals wherever he went. From signs of his passing—footprints, buried prophecies, weird landforms—they have built monasteries and markers.

Scholars agree that Guru Rinpoche was a real person, that he came from Uddiyana, a kingdom possibly located around present-day Swat in Pakistan, and that he arrived in Tibet some time around 760. Beyond that, it’s hard to unravel history from legend. His legacy reverberates still—think of the snake-banishing St. Patrick of Ireland, or Britain’s legendary King Arthur, if those heroes were still regarded by the Irish and British as a living presence and personal protector. Travel throughout the region, turn any corner, and, like me, you’ll find some trace of the Guru.

1. Khechopalri Lake, Sikkim, India, November 2003

Guru sighting: Footprint; handprint

Past the reed-walled village homes, around a dirt-smeared old chorten, fifty meters beyond a lone thatched-roof farmhouse, in the middle of the trail, we find the dark boulder. The little monk, who has abandoned the tea shop of the tiny Khechopalri Monastery to serve as my impromptu guide, bends down and rolls aside a small protective stone.

And there it is: the unmistakable imprint of a right foot, anatomically precise, at an odd angle to the ground. Each toe is clearly etched into the boulder; the heel is outlined in white chalk. The farmer, my other guide, points to another knobby boulder a few yards away: a left hand print.

I stand muddy-booted in the misting rain, frowning like a forensic analyst, trying to piece together the sequence of events. Did the Guru take a running start, bank off the first, and then push off the second rock, ratcheting himself upward like some Parkour stuntman? Was this his standard technique for mounting Yeshe Tsogyal, his consort, meditation partner and preferred mode of transport around the Himalaya, whom he transformed into (what else?) a pregnant flying tigress for the purpose? Did he take off to tame recalcitrant demons and hostile pagan bureaucrats in some other far-flung district of neighboring Bhutan or Tibet? Did he know where he was going? Or was he, you know, just winging it, like the rest of us?

The farmer and the monk wave to me and take off back up the trail, back to work. I look around to see if anyone’s watching. I hold up my right foot.

A match. Apparently the Guru was a size 10.5.

2. Reru, Zanskar, India, July 2005

Guru sighting: Terma

It’s a long dusty walk back from Phuktal, the remote monastery in northwest India’s Zanskar Valley, built around a spring that never stops flowing. Phuktal is where monks guard the only extant written records of Zanskar and, some locals say, various terma– certain hidden teachings and prophecies stashed by the Guru for future discovery, like a spiritual Easter Egg hunt unfolding on the scale of millennia. (Many terma were entrusted to Yeshe Tsogyal, who deposited them inside rocks, in tree trunks, at the bottom of lakes, even traced in the sky. Some terma are physical objects such as written texts; others are revealed only in the mind of tertons, reincarnations of the Guru’s original disciples. Some are even places: beyul, “hidden valleys” that only become visible to those prepared to see them.)

So I stop to rest in the quiet village of Reru. There I meet Namgyal, a friendly young Tibetan teacher from Dharamsala, sitting on the steps of his school, strumming his guitar. He likes Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind.” He likes the songs written by the Sixth Dalai Lama, a famous romantic lyricist who lived in the 17^th century, who partied hard and died young, like any good rocker, in mysterious circumstances.

Namgyal likes Guru Rinpoche, too. “He was drinking much chang,” he says with a grin, referring to the local hooch. Indeed, in most iconography, the Guru holds a skull cup in his left hand – supposedly brimming with sweet nectar, symbolizing the “Ocean of Wisdom” of the dharma teachings. Or is it, as some scholars say, “divine liquor,”a fast-track to enlightenment?

“Go to Mandi, in Himachal Pradesh,” Namgyal says. “There is a lake there called Rewalsar.” Namgyal tells a story you will hear in every remote corner of the Himalaya: Guru Rinpoche was invited by the local king to bind some troublemaking spirits. He obliged, following the tantric practice of not eliminating or suppressing negative forces, but channeling and reorienting their energy toward the purpose of waking everyone up. And who knows? Maybe he drank a little chang while he was there, too. After all, the Guru was perhaps the progenitor of the Tibetan tradition of “crazy wisdom” – outrageous behavior meant to shake ordinary mortals out of their complacent, blinkered sense of what was right, wrong, important.

“You should go,” Namgyal says. “The Guru left footprints there, too.”

3. Urgyen Dzong, Ladakh, India, September 2006

Guru sighting: Caves; landforms

Ladakhi students negotiate a narrow ledge to reach Guru Rinpoche's caves in the remote valley of Urgyen Dzong, near Kargil in Ladakh, India. (Photo:Jonathan Mingle.)

Shit. I am stuck. I am stuck upside down. I am stuck upside down in a cave.

Take a deep breath. “Hey guys, I think I'm stuck.”

“No, acho Jon, you’re fine. Keep going! It’s not far!”

“No, really, I think I’m too big for this cave.”

“No, no, move your arm up above your head. You will fit. You will be fine!”

The author emerging from a tight spot in the caves of Urgyen Dzong. (Photo: Jonathan Mingle.)

I can hear but not see my Ladakhi friends, all high school and college-aged students at a school where I am teaching near Leh, in far northern India. They are earnest and encouraging, perched at the cave’s mouth – but they are wrong. I am not fine. I will not fit. I am stuck. The flat metal taste of panic spreads on my tongue.

After several tries, I manage to rotate my shoulder, compressing my profile enough so I can wriggle backwards and retreat up and out of the tube-shaped fissure. I crawl back into the light and shrug. My friends are clearly disappointed: I am the first of our group of dozens on this carefree picnic excursion to not pass through the dark caves of Urgyen Dzong.

Locals believe this series of caves in western Ladakh—along with the fantastic rock promontories in the twisting narrow gorge that leads to them, shaped into the faces of kings and tutelary deities and ibex and strange creatures—were created by Guru Rinpoche. Ladakhis believe that only the virtuous can pass through these caves out into the light. The sinful get stuck or rebuffed. Their karmic baggage is too bulky.

I’m relieved to be upright, out in the open. But my friend Becky, a teacher at the school and long-time resident of Ladakh, shakes her head and turns me around. “Jon, you have to go through,” she says with a rueful smile. “If you don’t, the students will always say, “Acho (big brother) Jon couldn’t fit, he must be bad!””

She’s right. They will say it half-jokingly, but they will always say it. I feel their eyes on me – following me like surrogates of the Guru’s own unstinting gaze. They are smiling, but wondering, too. The physical passage has become a metaphysical litmus test.

What would the Guru do? He might brush aside such expectations like a layer of fine Ladakh dust. But he was also given to grand gestures, symbolism, showmanship. Damn.

So I head back into the stone maw. Halfway through, I feel the walls closing in, squeezing me. I take a breath. I pop my shoulder, raise my arm above my head, and slide through inch by claustrophobic inch. Soon I am protruding halfway out of the cliff face, birthed into a bright abyss, the valley floor a hundred-foot-drop below.

Two guys are there to catch me by the legs and haul me up onto a juniper ledge in the sun. Everybody cheers.

I have passed into the light.

4. Thimphu, Bhutan, May 2010

Guru sighting: Lost image

An intricate rendering of Guru Rinpoche, in his manifestation as Pema Jungne bringing the teachings to Tibet, on a rock face outside of Thimphu, Bhutan. He holds a skull cup of nectar containing the "Ocean of Wisdom" of his teachings - in his left hand. (Photo: Jonathan Mingle.)

“Three aspects of Guru Rinpoche are especially significant!”

The lecture hall full of Bhutanese bureaucrats and aging tourists falls quiet, leans in to hear the old Tibetan master teacher better.

“FACE! Carries us into a state of meditation. GAZE! Penetrates, inspires natural mind. HANDS! Right holds the vajra, symbolizes power of all Buddhas, subjugates obstacles, negativity. Left hand holds cup for healing nectar, purifies illness.”

He passes out photographs of an image, a famous statue of Guru Rinpoche that disappeared in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. In the photo, the Guru seems more bemused than usual - like he’s been enjoying some chang with the boys, telling some old war stories, connecting with people on whatever level they happen to be on. Vajrayana teachings, I recall, are transmitted not through books, but directly between teacher and student, on secure wavelengths.

That FACE is familiar, though. I think back to all the places I’ve encountered it, without even looking: Pemayangtse, Likir, Hemis, Takthok, Bardan… The wide eyes, unblinking, mischievously, aggressively open, vibrating above a pencil-thin mustache that seems, too, like a provocation.

Those eyes pose a challenge. They call you out. Call you in. They follow you, like those of an old painting on the wall. They say this: I am fully awake. And you? What about you?

5. Takstang, Paro, Bhutan, May, 2010

Guru sighting: Cave; monastery

Steps leading to the entrance of Takstang, the "Tiger's Lair", the gravity-defying monastery built around a cave where Guru Rinpoche meditated in the Paro Valley of Bhutan, after flying there on the back of a pregnant tigress. (Photo: Jonathan Mingle.)

It’s lunchtime in the Tiger’s Lair. Bhutan’s most famous monastery is closed to visitors. But a monk lets me in anyway, past a group of elderly Korean tourists filing out for the long descent back to their tour bus.

I’ve come mostly for the steep hike, straight up from the valley floor. But it seems like a rare opportunity to have the place all to myself. So I wander and linger.

Takstang, the “tiger’s lair”, is a warren of temples clinging to the face of a 1500-foot, vertical cliff. Its tenure there in the sky seems only slightly less incredible than the way it was founded: by Guru Rinpoche, as Dorjo Trolo – the wrathful flame-spitting form he assumed for smacking down those recalcitrant demons - flying here on the back of his tigress.

He supposedly meditated here for three months (or was it three years?), and then he flew off again to tangle with a stubborn deity named Shelging Karpo in the Bumthang valley to the east, who was vengefully sapping the life force of the local king. After shape-shifting into a bird-like creature, he conquered Shelging Karpo and secured his allegiance. Guru Rinpoche then planted his wooden staff in the ground to close the deal. It became a cypress tree, a gnarled descendant of which still stands.

I duck into the shrine room of the Tiger’s Lair. The spot where the Guru meditated is mostly obscured by a profusion of statues, butter lamps, white scarves. An old image of Guru Rinpoche as one of his eight manifestations - Pema Jungme, his dharma-teaching form, usually depicted sitting on a lotus, clutching a trident, wearing heavy boots as he must have when he visited Tibet - was famous for occasionally speaking out loud to visitors. But it was destroyed in a fire in 1998. Now there is a new, non-speaking replacement, a smaller statue with the familiar brazen face.

I stand there in silence, barely aware of time passing: 10, 20, 30 minutes. Though I know it can’t be – I’m not a mystic, not a Buddhist – the face seems alive. Its gilded features seem to be morphing. The vajra he holds – his primary weapon, symbolizing a thunderbolt – seems loaded like a gun. The air in the room feels charged, the way it does before a thunderstorm. My thoughts tumble.

Finally released from some invisible grip, I turn around. An older monk has been seated on some cushions ever since I entered, rocking gently, thumbing his prayer beads. Now he regards me, under eyebrows slightly raised. He nods with a knowing smile. And I have the electric sense – never had it before, never since – of someone plugging right on in and reading my mind.

The monk slowly extends both hands. He gives me two big thumbs up.

6. Drak Yerpa, Tibet, May, 2011

Guru sighting: Cave; footprints

A visitor considers the huge footprint—one of many signs left by Guru Rinpoche— at Drak Yerpa, a holy site and monastery complex an hour's drive from Lhasa, Tibet. (Photo: Jonathan Mingle.)

The Cultural Revolution wasn’t kind to Drak Yerpa, the monastery complex known as the “spiritual axis” of Lhasa, an hour’s drive outside of the Tibetan capital. Its centerpiece is a steep cliff rising out of a sweeping set of grassy hills, one of was a traditional “sky burial” site, where mourners would leave their loved ones’ remains to be consumed by scavenging birds. Many of the hundreds of cells where monks used to sit in silent retreat were demolished. But some structures have been restored, including the main shrine room.

There I find the Dawa Puk, the Moon Cave, inside a small cleft in the rose-colored rocks - one of the three most important sites where Guru Rinpoche meditated. The dark room contains an altar, and images of the usual wrathful tutelary deities, protector spirits of particular places, schools, teachings. I reach up to the roof, and swab with one finger a bit of soot left deposited by the flames of countless lit butter lamps. I consider the Guru’s footprint etched there in the stone of the cave, rubbed to a shine by centuries of pilgrims, and much bigger than the one I saw eight years ago in Sikkim.

Another cave nearby has an image of the 9^th-century monk who assassinated Langdarma, the Buddhism-hating king of Tibet, almost a hundred years after Guru Rinpoche brought the religion here. The assassin’s hat used to be there, but it disappeared during the Cultural Revolution. I ask my guide Chenchup about it, but he shakes his head. He doesn’t know what happened, or doesn’t want to say. (On other subjects, Chenchup is pretty talkative. Of a pyramid-shaped mountain spied the next day on our way toward the Nepal border, he jokes: “It’s name means ‘big penis’!” And when we camp near Everest Base Camp a day later, Chenchup plies me for advice on the girls he hopes to meet some day in New York. His big question: “Do they have a good heart?”)

The next day we stop by Rongbuk Gonpa, at 16,340 feet the highest monastery in the world. Rongbuk is a charming, ramshackle affair, with unsecured boards for steps, rickety railings, beams jutting into the courtyard. In the shrine room at the top of this recently rebuilt monastery sits a new statue of Guru Rinpoche. Like some Himalayan whack-a-mole - from his first arrival in Tibet, when hostile ministers at the court of the king sought to have him murdered by highwaymen on a mountain pass, all the way up to China’s icon-smashing Cultural Revolution - you just can’t keep the Guru down.

7. Padum, Zanskar, India July 2011

Guru sighting: Statue; dream

A view of Padum, the main town of the Zanskar region of northwest India. "Padum" is one of the many names used for Guru Rinpoche. (Photo: Jonathan Mingle.)

Over breakfast I tell my old friend Urgain about the dream I had last night: Guru Rinpoche was alive, was speaking to me, not so much in words as through a riot of colors and sound, not unlike the world itself. Urgain – whose name is the Tibetan word for Guru Rinpoche’s birthplace, whose hometown of Padum is another name for Guru Rinpoche himself – listens carefully, gravely. His eyes widen. “This is a very good sign,” he says.

Then he gets up, walks over to a shelf, and pulls down an object wrapped in scarves. He sets it on the table and unveils a foot-high, ornately wrought bronze figure of … Guru Rinpoche. His nephew, a monk in distant Karnataka, had arrived the night before, after an absence of seven years, after traveling for a week by train and bus and jeep the entire north-south length of India. He had brought the figure to Urgain that morning while I slept.

I’ve been meeting the Guru on the road for almost a decade now. Mostly randomly, sometimes seeking him out. Now he has come to me. Like everything about the guy – the myth, the historical figure, the wild psychic forces he represents - it resists understanding.

Urgain and I just look at each other. The little Guru stares straight ahead.

8. Sani, Zanskar, India, July 2012

Cave; statue; prophecy

Zanskaris celebrate after the Sani Nasjal festival. Guru Rinpoche's small meditation cave is halfway up the mountain across the river. It is occasionally still used by hermits and monks in meditation retreat. (Photo: Jonathan Mingle.)

The monastery of Sani, site of continuous worship since the time of Emperor Kanishka in the second century, throws a good party. Every summer, on the last day of the Sani Nasjal festival, eight monks emerge from the inner sanctum into the main courtyard, masked and festooned, as part of the ritual chams dances.

It’s great spectacle. They twirl in sync as the eight manifestations of Guru Rinpoche: Nyima Odzer, the “light rays of the sun”, Pema Gyalpo, the “conquering prince”, the terrifying Dorje Trolo, who bound demons to uphold the dharma. A legend goes that the valley of Zanskar was once ruled by a one-eyed demoness, until the Guru pinned her to the ground by building temples at her head (Sani), at her heart (Pipiting), and her foot (Tsazar). (The Guru was the Michael Jackson of Himalayan antiquity: there are countless stories of him overwhelming both supernatural and political opposition merely by dropping some sick dance moves on some windswept mountain pass.)

At the end of the festival, revelers spill out onto the bright green fields next to the Stod River. Wandering there among them, I run into a friend named Tanzin. We watch the drunken young men, the families picnicking, the girls strolling arm in arm – a tableau like some mid-summer Midwestern county fair. We gaze up at the mountain rearing above them, toward a small cave – now a hermit’s retreat – where the Guru once meditated.

Guru Rinpoche compared this valley to a “happy cemetery.” This was actually a huge compliment: mystics of his day sought out burial grounds for their contemplative practice, as places well stocked with reminders of impermanence, decay, the folly of holding on. “The trees of the cemetery are the bushes at Sani and the birds there are the vultures thereof. So said Padmasambhava.”

I remind Tanzin that when we first met, he had told me that Guru Rinpoche predicted the plague of locusts that descended on Zanskar in 2006 and 2007, devouring most of the crops. And that in the same ancient scrap of text he had apparently also prescribed a treatment: three cures involving writing on sand, writing on paper, a prayer for wind. “I heard the abbot of Karsha monastery has this terma,” Tanzin said confidently.

Tanzin says the Guru left a small statue of himself, right before he left Zanskar. It was an uncannily accurate image. An 8^th-century selfie. I think I’ve seen it. It’s still there in a tiny alley in the Sani monastery, almost forgotten.

Guru Rinpoche even left a caption, too. A note pinned to it that read: “This is like me. So remember.”

And then he took off again.

The screaming face of Goh Gajah. (Photo: mastahanky on Flickr)

Have you ever looked at the face of another person and thought, "Man. I wish I could walk into their mouth." Well judging by the abundance of doorways that have been sculpted to look like gaping maws, you are not alone. From ancient temples to abstract sculpture parks to whimsical bridges, we just can't seem to help ourselves from creating entryways that look like humanity's oral fixations writ large. Take a look at some more of the world's most jaw-dropping portals.

GOA GAJAH
Ubud, Indonesia     

Those eyes... (Photo: Daniel Roy on Flickr) 

India's Elephant Temple, has little to do with elephants but everything to do with the little shrine tucked in the mouth of a grimacing demon.

BUDDHA PARK
Vientiane, Laos  

This door looks pretty upset for being in a Buddhist park. (Photo: Mark Fischer on Flickr)

The Buddha Park in Laos is a sprawling complex of Buddhist figures of all shape and size, but this screaming tunnel mouth inspires anything but peace and tranquility.

GARDEN OF BOMARZO
Bomarzo, Italy

The altar in his mouth looks like a little tongue.  (Photo: Erin/Flickr)

The sculpture work in Italy's "Park of the Monsters" ranges from classically-inspired to nightmarish. The beastly door leading to a little stone altar clearly falls in the latter category.

 
Notice the light red etching around the lips. (Photo: Alessio Damato/Wikipedia) 

GHOST CITY OF FENGDU
Fengdu, China 

Don't roll your eyes at me, demon door! (Photo: Michael Lusk/Flickr)

Chinese folklore surrounding ghosts and spirits is elaborate to say the least. The Ghost City of Fengdu is a sort of amusement park centered on these beliefs, where a demonic gateway (like the one above) fits right in.  

ZUCCARI PALACE
Rome, Italy 

The grumpiest door in the world. (Photo: pboduch/Atlas Obscura)

Alternately known as "The Monster House," this 16th century mansion is covered in architectural grotesques surrounding all of the doors and windows. It seems that the intended effect was whimsy, but the result leans closer to horror.  

The happiest window in the world. (Photo: pboduch/Atlas Obscura)

LA SCARZOULA
Montegabbione, Italy

Despite how this looks, this door does not turn its nose up at visitors.  (Photo: FrancescaV.com/Flickr)

La Scarzoula was originally established as a monastery for Franciscan monks, but after it was taken over by an artist in the 1950s it became a surreal sculpture complex. The surprise on this doorway's face is probably not far from what the monks would look like if they could see their monastery today.

THE DRAGON ESCALATOR
Beijing, China

This also has an exit that's attached to the dragon... but that's a different list. (Photo: Damien Day/Atlas Obscura)

Nearly every fantasy story involves some instance of escaping a dragon's jaws, but this Chinese escalator thumbs its nose at tradition by asking visitors to walk right in.  

Cool dragon, bro. (Photo: Damien Day/Atlas Obscura)

DIAMONDBACK BRIDGE
Tucson, Arizona

Indiana Jones never made it all the way across Tuscon. (Photo: Bill Morrow on Flickr)

This Arizona bridge is shaped like one the deadly local snakes, a giant version of which seems a bit monstrous. Nonetheless anyone trying to cross the freeway that runs under its belly will need to mosey on between its massive fangs.

CATOOSA BLUE WHALE
Catoosa, Oklahoma

That's a mighty big smile for something that's been abandoned. (Photo: Caveman Chuck Coker/Flickr)

From the Bible to Pinocchio, people have been dreaming of being swallowed by a whale for as long as we've known about the gentle giants. This abandoned amusement attraction has its mouth open wide to make those dreams come true.   

The belly of this whale isn't so bad. (Photo: breeps/Flickr)

KINDERGARTEN WOLFARTSWEIER
Karlsruhe, Germany 

Look out, kids! (Photo: presse.karlsruhe.de)

While a lot of the entryways on this list have been somewhat sinister, not all mouth doors are bad. Take for instance this German kindergarten that is shaped like a friendly cat! It still eats children though...

The American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

Within the campus of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is a geographer’s treasure trove: over a million artifacts from the American Geographical Society, one of the most incredible collections of maps, atlases and globes to be found in America.

But, ironically, the library is practically unexplored territory. When I asked for directions on campus many students themselves didn’t know it was there.

It's an inconspicuous home for a storied collection: this is the final resting place of the library of the illustrious American Geographical Society. Once a powerhouse of exploratory resources, the organization had fallen on hard times in the late 1970s. The private donations and corporate funding on which they had been reliant, had reduced to a trickle, and the Society was forced to sell its imposing neo-classical headquarters in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. Eventually downsizing to a small rental office in Brooklyn, the Society was adamant that its unparalleled collection should be kept intact. Resisting the temptation to sell of its valuable archive, including the remarkable signed AGS Fliers and Explorers Globe, they undertook a nationwide search for a suitable home. As current AGS President, Professor Jerry Dobson explains, “The truth is that our revenues didn’t allow us to take care of the collection in a proper manner, so we held a national competition for a suitable repository.”

Faculty members of the geography department at UWM heard what was happening and applied. The University itself was barely 20 years old, but had a brand new library building large enough to house the entire collection. The New York States Attorney office wasn’t happy that the rich cultural heritage and treasures of the Society would be leaving the State of New York, but with no other viable option to take the collection as a whole, the decision was taken to send the collection to Wisconsin in 1978.

It took 16 trucks to move the vast collection, where it lives and is actively curated today in the Golda Meir Library. Incredibly, the precious collection is publicly available. 

The 'rare room' of the Library containing some of its most valuable items. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

Entering the library, the first thing that strikes you is the amount of globes—there are hundreds of globes on permanent display, including one dating as early as 1613. The largest globe is a rare example of the giant “President’s Globe”. Made during World War II by the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS was the predecessor of the CIA), the 50 inch diameter globes were made for President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Weighing over 700 pounds, and thought to be the most detailed and accurate globes made up until that point, the intent was the FDR and Churchill would have an identical reference source as they plotted their war plans. Roosevelt kept the giant globe next to his desk in the Oval office, and it can now be found in his former home in Hyde Park. The globe on display in the AGS library was one of 12-15 originally made by Weber Costello out of Chicago. Others were constructed for the Air Force and the Office of War Information.

On the wall of the “rare room,” past shelves of vellum bound atlases from the 17th century is a map of the world with a single arched line stretching over the Atlantic. Inscribed, “used in laying out great circle course for New York to Paris flight” and initialed C.A.L., it is Charles Lindbergh’s actual hand drawn navigation map from his record flight in 1927. It was donated to the AGS by Lindbergh himself.

Photograph taken by Belmore Browne of the expedition to climb the Ruth Glacier, Alaska. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

Next to it is a series of maps depicting what we now know as New Zealand and Australia. Dated 1770, they are signed “Lieut. J. Cook, Commander of His Majesty’s Bark the Endeavour.” These are the actual maps, drawn by his own hand, from when Captain Cook explored and mapped the previously uncharted east coast of Australia. Cook was such a first class cartographer that his maps still hold up today for their accuracy.

Thrilling artifacts, for sure, but it’s hard to wonder why the collection isn’t in a  major museum, getting a bigger audience. After all, the original intent of the American Geographical Society was to be a resource for exploration; it was founded to discover the lost Sir John Franklin polar expedition. Today the collection stands at roughly 500,000 maps, 200 globes and 12,000 atlases.
 There are over 600,000 pictures in the media collection, nitrate negatives and glass plates many of which don’t exist anywhere else. They record countless expeditions undertaken by the Society, as well as important events in world history and geographical discoveries. Rows upon rows of shelves are filled with rare travelogues from the golden age of Victorian exploration, titles such as “The Wild Tribes of the Soudan”, “The Unknown Horn of Africa” and “The Cave Dwellers of Southern Tunisia."

Pictorial history-map of Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, a village in Mexico. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

But the library’s acquisition of them isn’t just a historical accident. In the room housing the archives of the Society itself, the memoranda, ledgers, and accession records that detail the day to day operating documents of the Society, Robert Jaegar, Archivist, pulls out one acid free box. It contains a small parcel wrapped in string. The typed index card attached explains that this is a “notebook found on board of the Resolute of the Franklin Search expedition. Abandoned in the Arctic 1854.” The Society’s mission ended in failure, (Lord Franklin’s ship was just discovered in 2014), but it set in motion the collection of artifacts still actively ongoing today. The next box Jaegar showed me contained a letter from 1859 sent to the AGS in New York, with the return address, ‘Dr. David Livingstone, River Zambezi, Eastern Africa’, shortly before he lost contact with the outside world. The library is overflowing with similar invaluable primary source documents. Marcy Bidney, the head curator of the American Geographical Society Library explains how “it was always intended as a practical resource, hence the decision to house the collection publicly available in a library.”

For Susan Peschel, Visual Sources Librarian at the AGSL, organizing this collection has been a lifelong work. Originally interning at the old Society headquarters in Manhattan, Peschel was studying Library studies in Milwaukee when the 16-truck archive arrived in 1978. The collection was so extensive, it took two years of organizing before it opened to the public. Peschel has been curating the collection ever since; and it’s proved to be an invaluable research resource.

Abraham Ortelius' 1570 map of Iceland, depicting sea monsters (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

When Greg Grandin wrote his account of Henry Ford’s lost jungle utopian city Fordlandia, the library  was able to pull from its archives the original hand drawn plans belonging to the Companhia Ford Industrial do Brasil. The maps not only plotted the twelve hour boat exploration down the Amazon river to the planned rubber plantation, but it laid out the entire estate, even down to the individual 71 houses for the 106 families that took part in Ford’s doomed city.

The oldest map in the collection dates from 1452. One of only three surviving MappaMundi drawn by the Venetian cartographer Giovanni Leardo, it is considered one of the finest example of Renaissance map making, and the only one to be found in America. It is an extraordinary vision of how our world was viewed at the time, with Jerusalem as the epicenter, the Mediterranean Sea running north to south, and featuring the only three known continents, Asia, Europe and Africa.

Dr. Livingstone, we presume. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

Bringing to mind the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Society Library is filled with countless shelves of forgotten atlases, secret lock boxes containing Napoleon’s beautifully illustrated “Description de l’Egypt’, and incredibly rare early editions of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia. Ptolemy had originally mapped a spherical world as early as AD 150, but the work disappeared. By the time of Leardo’s MappaMundi the world was flat again. Ptolemy’s atlas was rediscovered during the Renaissance and is a view of the world much more recognizable today. At the AGS library you can hold in your hand the physical atlas that forever changed the world’s view of itself. You can even see the impression the original copper plates left on the vellum.

Original map outlining Henry Ford's lost jungle utopian village Fordlandia. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

"When we look at these maps it really is this history of world exploration development of knowledge about what the world looked like," Bidney says. Flemish map maker Abraham Ortelius may have been the first person to imagine that the continents were originally joined together, but he also created some of the original “here be dragons” maps. His map of Iceland from 1603 records where to find specific aquatic monsters, ocean unicorns and sea hogs.

The Society library also holds a remarkable collection of more fanciful maps. The far end of the library, section 999, is home to “Imaginary Places, tables and charts”; here Middle Earth is actively curated as North America. One of the more chilling items in the archive, is a map of Germany from 1936. Printed in English by the Reichsbahnzentrale für den Deutschen Reiseverkehr, it was intended as a tourist advertisement and travel guide to visit “Germany, The Beautiful Travel Country”. Colorfully illustrated in a style similar to “Where’s Waldo?” it shows at its jovial best a country that was anything but.

Charles Lindbergh's signed New York to Paris flight navigation chart, 1927. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

Perhaps my favorite library items surround Robert Peary’s discovery of the polar island Crocker Land. In 1906, Peary had failed to reach the North Pole. Terribly short of cash and desperate to launch another attempt on the Pole, Peary claimed to have seen an undiscovered island on his expedition off the coast of Greenland. He called it Crocker Land in an attempt to appeal to one of his financial backers, George Crocker to release more funds. The expedition was green lit, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and the AGS. In reality, Peary had made up the island entirely. Disaster struck when the expedition hit terrible weather and was stranded in the ice for four years. To avert suspicion, the expedition actually began to map and plot the fictional island to show George Crocker that his investment hadn’t been in vain. Peary had an actual map drawn up indicating the location of the island, “seen by Peary 1906.” For four years the expedition took astronomical records, studied glaciology, and terrestrial magnetism of an island that didn’t exist. 

Missing: one giant pig. (Photo: Atlas Obscura) 

As music becomes an almost exclusively digital commodity, the days of indelibly iconic album art may be a thing of the past. Yet the look of some record covers are so iconic that they continue to define what an unforgettable album design looks like. Many of the most memorable covers feature places in the real world that you can still visit. So plug in your headphones and take a look at six locations from iconic album covers. 

BATTERSEA POWER STATION
From: Pink Floyd's Animals

This massive Art Deco power plant was built in 1929 to provide coal power to a large portion of London. However it is better remembered today as the backdrop on the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals, where it framed a giant floating pig. The plant has been dormant since the 1980s, but thanks to its notoriety, it's been saved from demolition a number of times. That's the power of music, or at least its packaging.

Oh, no, found it. (Photo property of EMI Records) 

GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 
From: Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy

No quarter. All hexagons. (Photo by Commonist on Wikipedia)

Ireland's hexagonal stone formation known colorfully as the Giant's Causeway, truly looks like an otherworldly landscape. Thus it comes as no surprise that fantasy-rock gods, Led Zeppelin chose the site to be the cover for their fifth album. Adding to the alien air that the site naturally exudes, a number of naked children were made to climb on the rocks and the colors were drastically altered. Yet no amount of photo trickery is able to hide the natural wonder of this angular field.  

 
The song may remain the same, but thanks to erosion, the Giant's Causeway is constantly changing. (Photo property of Atlantic Records)

ELLIOT SMITH'S TRIBUTE WALL
From: Elliot Smith's Figure 8

Wouldn't momma be proud? (Photo: MacLeod on Wikipedia)

Located on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, the swirling bit of wall art that became forever linked with the image of troubled troubadour Elliot Smith can still be found nearly 15 years later. Instead of disappearing under civil whitewashing or graffiti, the wall has become a memorial site for the late singer who killed himself in 2003. Fans come and write lyrics or personal notes on the wall, often even touching up the colorful waves.

I see color bars. Well, swirls, really. (Photo property of Dreamworks Records)  

SALFORD LAD'S CLUB
From: The Smiths' The Queen is Dead

Frankly, Mr. Shankly, I think I remember this place from that Smiths picture. (Photo: Niklas Pivic on Flickr)

While this site was not actually featured on the outer cover of The Smiths' album The Queen is Dead, the band took a photo standing in front of it for the inside cover. This iconic photo of the musicians standing in front of the historic boy's club catapulted not only the club to national fame, but the band as well, invoking the sassy delinquent attitude that both are often associated with.   

Each of these boys has a thorn in their side. (Photo property of Rough Trade Records) 

THE BURRA HOMESTEAD
From: Midnight Oil's Diesel and Dirt

Someone has been paying the rent. Been paying their fair share. (Photo: Chris Fithall on Flickr)
 

Little more than a ramshackle farmhouse, this isolated home in south Australia has become nearly instantly recognizable as the building from Midnight Oil's album Diesel and Dirt. The stark image of the homestead evoked the sunburnt Australian countryside that the band was associated with at the time. Today the little farm looks much the same as it did in 1987. It is on private property but serious M.O. fans can still see it from the road.

Its hard to get a good night's sleep when your bed is burning. (Photo property of Columbia Records)

U2 JOSHUA TREE WRECKAGE
From: U2's The Joshua Tree

Did you find what you're looking for? (Photo: jcookfisher on Flickr)

U2 took the name of their fifth album from the American desert plant of the same name, and unsurprisingly took the album's art photos in front of one. With the success of the album, the tree that was featured in the photos became a popular site for fans who could find it (there is a common misconception that the tree sits in Joshua Tree National Park, but it is actually hundreds of miles away). The tree fell down some time around 2000, but it is still visited by fans who leave little tributes, plaques and message in the rocks. In 2015 someone even went and hacked off a souvenir cross-section.   

 
Oh, there it is. Behind you. (Photo property of Island Records)

Sloth friends at Aviarios del Caribe in Costa Rica. (Photo: Jenny Jozwiak on Flickr). 

Once you've been to an animal sanctuary, it's hard to go back to zoos. These conservation centers do away with cages, allowing their creatures to roam free while keeping them safe from predators—both animal and human. The result is a relaxed environment where visitors can get close to critters without upsetting any eco-systems or getting pecked to death by a stressed-out swan. That's a win for everyone.

The following seven sanctuaries around the world all offer the opportunity to get up close and personal with their animals. If you've ever wanted a one-on-one meeting with a three-toed sloth or hoped to hand-feed a flock of fluffy cygnets, these are your dream destinations.

 ZAO FOX VILLAGE
Shiroishi, Japan

One of the sleepy vulpine Village residents. (Photo: satoshi miura on Flickr.)

Six kinds of foxes await you at this wooded sanctuary, located at the base of Mount Zao in Miyagi Prefecture. Buy some fox snacks at the on-site store and you will likely attract a troop of curious Japanese Red Foxes wherever you roam. 

DUKE LEMUR CENTER
Durham, North Carolina

This lemur is aghast that you have not yet visited him. (Photo: bnilsen on Flickr.)

Thick-tailed bush babies, pygmy slow lorises, and ring-tailed lemurs are among the many perpetually wide-eyed prosimians running rampant at Duke University. The sanctuary, located, naturally, on Lemur Lane, is integrated into some of the university's biology and ecology classes. Non-students can take advantage of one of the regular tours, during which you'll see around 10 lemur species.

ABU DHABI FALCON HOSPITAL
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Take these broken wings... (Photo: Eric Elder.)

Walk into the Falcon Hospital and you'll see a most unusual sight: birds of prey, seated in rows on astroturf perches, wearing tiny hoods. These falcons are patients awaiting procedures, which could be anything from a talon trim to the bandaging of a broken wing. 

AVIARIOS DEL CARIBE - THE SLOTH SANCTUARY
Cahuita, Costa Rica

A young sloth snoozing the day away. (Photo: Jenny Jozwiak on Flickr.)

This refuge was established in 1992, after an injured sloth named Buttercup won her way into the founders' hearts. Since then, hundreds of injured two- and three-toed sloths have passed through the place. Some end up being permanent residents, while others are released back into the wild. An on-site "slothpital" treats sloths who have fallen onto power lines or been hit by cars. In the infant section, tiny, wet-nosed sloths are bathed in buckets and dressed in pajamas made from athletic socks before being placed in incubators.

WOLF CONSERVATION CENTER
South Salem, New York

Atka, a Wolf Ambassador who is utterly unfazed by humans. (Photo: Wolf Conservation Center.)

Time to run with the wolves. Evening howl sessions are among the experiences you can have at the Wolf Conservation Center, located just north of New York City. In addition to conserving critically endangered species such as the Mexican gray wolf and red wolf, the sanctuary is home to "ambassador wolves" who are especially at ease among humans. Their fame goes beyond Salem: Atka, the Arctic gray wolf pictured above, has been known to travel to Brooklyn bars to meet his admirers.

TAT KUANG SI BEAR RESCUE CENTRE
Luang Prabang, Laos

"Welcome to my artisanal latticed hammock, human." (Photo: istolethetv on Flickr.)

The black bears at this chilled-out sanctuary have been rescued from poachers, who target the animals for their bile—an ingredient used in traditional medicine in China, South Korea, Vietnam, and Laos. Having been spared a life of pain and close confinement at bile farms, the bears live in open enclosures equipped with hammocks, tire swings, and lots of trees. Stroll along the paths and watch them play.

ABBOTSBURY SWANNERY
Dorset, United Kingdom

Chow time, longnecks! Get amongst it! (Photo: Richard Gillin on Flickr.)

During the Middle Ages, Abbotsbury Swannery was a producer of the finest swan meat one could cram down one's gullet. Today, the Dorset establishment is rather more kind to its flock. The swannery is a managed colony of nesting swans, meaning your odds of seeing freshly hatched, adorably confused cygnets are pretty favorable. Visitors are welcome to walk among the birds and hand-feed them.

Wall Street's once-illicit bull. (Photo: htmvalerio/Flicker.)

Early on Monday morning, a handful of people snuck into Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park to attach a bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the base of a Revolutionary War memorial. It was a daring, if ephemeral gesture: “The artists are fully aware of the bust’s inevitable destruction,” writes Bucky Turco of Animal  in his on-the-scene reporting of the statue’s installation.

But given that one of the city’s most famous sculptures began its life as a similar act of guerilla artistry, who’s to say that the Snowden statue’s destruction is really assured?

Charging Bull, a bronze sculpture in Manhattan’s Financial District that’s also sometimes known as the Wall Street Bull, is an icon—the literal embodiment of capitalism. A 7,100-pound depiction of a ferocious and aggressive bull, it’s one of the most visited and photographed sculptures in the entire city; back in 2004, then-parks-commissioner Adrian Benepe said, “It's become one of the most visited, most photographed and perhaps most loved and recognized statues in the city of New York. I would say it's right up there with the Statue of Liberty.”

And yet, it has more in common with the Snowden installation than it might seem.

Created by Italian-American (he was born in Sicily) artist Arturo Di Modica, Charging Bull was a response to the stock market crash of 1987. It was an attempt to encourage and applaud the financial sector with a visual representation of an optimistic stock market. But instead of working through the city, Di Modica spent over two years and a whopping $360,000 to create and install the statue, secretly, on December 15th, 1989. “Hundreds of people walked around, gawked at, admired and stroked the long-horned whip-tailed bull, the image of a surging market in the lore of high finance,” wrote the New York Times the following morning.

Shanghai's own, non-illicit Di Mondica bull. (Photo: Flickr/carloszgz).

And yet city officials didn’t immediately take to it. More from the New York Times:

"In effect, they told us there was a very large statue of a bull there, and it wasn't there yesterday, and to the best of their knowledge shouldn't be there,'' said Officer Joseph Gallagher, a police spokesman.

The police said that it was a traffic obstruction and that Mr. Di Modica had no permit. ''He had a negative reaction in the past and decided not to apply for a permit,'' Ms. Stippa said.

As the police were considering how to remove the bull, the exchange hired a company from Queens to truck away what a spokeswoman for the exchange, Sharon Gamsin, called ''The Beastie.''

After two years spent in an impound lot, following public outcry in support of the sculpture, the city moved it to its current location in Bowling Green Park, near Wall Street.

There are lots of examples of guerilla art that’s both easy to install and easy to remove; graffiti comes to mind. But sculpture, especially bronze sculpture, is not. “Bronzes are not easy to haul around,” says Dianne Durante, author of Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide. “There's a Municipal Art Commission that's in charge of all sculptures on city property, and they have a process for approval before they allow a sculpture to be installed.”

Charging Bull is unusual in that it was immediately embraced and defended by the public. (In fact, Di Mondica has since installed versions of the bull in Shanghai and Amsterdam.) Whether the Snowden bust in Fort Greene Park will receive the same swell of appreciation is unclear; Durante, for her part, doesn’t appreciate the bust’s location, mounted as it is on part of a monument to fallen Revolutionary War soldiers. “To transform their monument into a pedestal for a modern anti-government rebel—whether or not you agree with what he did—is wrong,” she says.

Few even remember that Charging Bull was once a piece of illicit art. Durante says that its ownership is sort of unclear; legally it might have a temporary permit that’s unlikely to ever expire, but she talked to a former Parks Commissioner who thinks it might actually be city property now, having been “abandoned” for over 15 years, as Di Modica now lives in Italy.

For now, the Snowden head is in limbo: the Parks Department removed the statue on Monday afternoon and it is resting in Brooklyn’s 88th precinct. The investigation is pending.

The Singing Ringing Tree (Photo: Matthew Hartley on Flickr)

Arbor Day is coming up again on April 24th, but, let's be honest, the wonder of Mother Nature's trees have had the spotlight long enough.

For years, humans have been making weird trees out of bottles, stoplights, padlocks, and all manner of other materials (yes, sometimes including wood). This year, let's celebrate some trees that were built with the blood, sweat, and tears of artists and designers, not the miraculous process of photosynthesis that put us all to sleep in science class. Take a look at eight artificial arbors that stand boldly in the face of the natural order.

TRAFFIC LIGHT TREE
London, England

Stop. Go. Wait, slow down? (Photo: William Warby on Wikipedia)

The tall clump of traffic signals that stand near London's Canary Wharf were installed in 1998 on the former home of an indigenous plane tree that had died as a result of pollution. Unlike the naturally grown tree that proceeded it, the Traffic Light Tree is more than a match for the contagions of the city. The 75 sets of lights flare up in a random pattern that is meant to mimic the chaotic rhythms of its urban surroundings, a feat that the gently swaying leaves of a real tree couldn't hope to achieve.

   
This tree doesn't need to stat green. (Photo: AugustLH on Wikipedia)

STEAMPUNK TREEHOUSE
Milton, Delaware

Trees usually aren't allowed at Burning Man. For obvious reasons. (Photo: Fred von Lohmann on Flickr)

Despite its unctuous moniker, the brewery-based installation known formally as the Steampunk Treehouse is a burly, metal tree that looks tougher than any ancient sequoia. Initially created as a Burning Man attraction, the 40-foot-tall fake tree is built from thick metal plates and branching girders that hold a little hut high in its boughs. After touring a few festivals, the steel tree ended up at the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware where it is open to employees only. Say what you will about its crunchy origins, the Steampunk Treehouse is one hell of a party.

After Burning Man, the Steampunk Treehouse went back to its comfortable corporate job. (Photo: Carly Lesser & Art Drauglis on Flickr)

TUMBLEWEED CHRISTMAS TREE
Chandler, Arizona   

Scratchy Holidays! (Photo: Jonathan on Flickr)

This one may seem like a bit of a cheat since it's technically made from dead bushes (which could charitably be seen as smaller trees) but Chandler, Arizona's yearly desert tannenbaum is anything but natural. A few months before Christmas each year, city workers begin collecting the loose tumbleweeds that blow through the area. After they have around 1,000 of the dried bushes, they are mounted on a metal fir-tree-shaped frame, and the whole affair is lacquered in flame-retardant chemicals, glitter, and lights. Regular pine trees might not have the fortitude to make it in Arizona's harsh desert climes, but that doesn't stop the citizens of Chandler from enjoying the holiday.

THE BIERPINSEL
Berlin, Germany

Skymall? (Photo: János Balázs on Flickr)

Forget a treehouse, how about a treeMALL? Berlin's Bierpinsel (literally "beer brush," a name it received for the free beer served at its opening and its apparent resemblance to a brush) was opened in 1976 to a mixture of groans and applause from critics and locals. It was meant to resemble a tree with it's bulbous upper portion balanced on a thin "trunk." When in use, the structure housed restaurants and clubs, but it quickly saw many of the businesses struggle and close. As of 2006 it was closed and left abandoned. In recent years however it has been used as a massive canvas for large-scale graffiti projects. Let's see a real tree put up with that much spray paint.

If you don't consider this a tree, check out that bear scratching his back on the trunk. Then talk to me. (Photo: A.Savin on Wikipedia)  

THE SINGING RINGING TREE
Lancashire, England

Tree of Flutes. (Photo: Dave Leeming on Flickr)

Standing proudly atop an English hilltop, the Singing Ringing Tree looks like a gently cascading stack of metal pipes. Much ink has been spilled over the sound of rustling leaves and creaking branches, but the SRT actually produces musical notes when buffeted by the wind. Built in 2006, the nearly ten feet tall artwork produces a somewhat cacophonous tune as the wind passes through it. It may not be a classically-composed symphony, but it sure beats a bunch of sticks banging together.

If you listen closely, you can compose your own Philip Glass symphony. (Photo: Steve Glover on Flickr)

ELMER LONG'S BOTTLE TREE FARM
Oro Grande, California

99 bottles of beer on the... well, everything. (Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns on Flickr)

More of a forest than any single tree, the life's work of roadside artist Elmer Long is a grove of artificial trees, made of empty bottles mounted on poles. After coming into a sizable collection of empty bottles when his father passed away, Long set to creating a junkyard landscape along Route 66. Beginning in 2000 he began making his found forest, and by 2010 it had grown to include over 200 of the scrap trees. Like the Singing Ringing Tree above, Long's creations produce a subtle symphony as the winds howls through the countless empty bottles. In addition the transparent, refractive properties of the glass make the trees shine like a colorful crystal garden in the sun. Your move, natural browns and greens.

I suppose a bull would do just as poorly in here as in a china shop. (Photo: Peer Lawther on Flickr)

PADLOCK TREE PARK
Moscow, Russia

 
Sometimes love looks like a series of bulbous, diseased, metal trees. (Photo: Jason Eppink on Flickr) 

Running down the center of Moscow's Luzhkov Bridge, a row of metal trees are bowing under the weight of thousands of "love locks," left in place by couples that want to leave an unbreakable sign of their commitment in a public place. The tradition of leaving love locks can be found on bridge and fences in cities across the globe, but Russia's answer was to build their own arbors where lovers could hand their devotional padlocks. Usually the lovers write their initials on locks before placing them on one of the trees and throwing away the key. It is unknown how many spurned romantics return to reclaim their locks, but at least it's not as embarrassing as carving a heart in a real tree.

 
Somewhere there is a heart-shaped locksmith that is doing a-okay. (Photo by Jason Eppink on Flickr)

THE FLOWER TREE
Lyon, France

The Flower Tree is neither really. (Photo: opethpainter on Flickr)

This one's a twofer. Not only does Lyon's Flower Tree set out to be more beautiful than a tree, but it also put flowers to shame with ever-bright plastic blossoms. Created in 2003, the Flower Tree consists of 85 individual blossoms arranged in a bouquet atop a central stalk. While the installation was meant to be a temporary attraction, the city of Lyon took such a shine to it that they planted it permanently in the historic Place Bellecour, much to the chagrin of many who found the modern piece to clash with the otherwise staid square. Regardless, the Flower Tree remains in the face of critics, and the natural order.

Alice in Wonderland. In France. (Photo: KatieBush on Atlas Obscura)

(Looking out from the ruins of a cocaine kingpin's vacation home. Photo: Luke Spencer.)

About an hour’s sail northwest from the old Spanish port city of Cartagena de Indias are a group of about 30 islands known collectively as the Islas de Rosario. With their bleached white beaches, clear blue crystal waters and abundant wildlife, they are a true tropical paradise. Hundreds of daytrippers from Cartagena descend on La Playa Blanca year round, tourists and locals alike.

But a little further out into the Caribbean Sea lies an island whose way of life has remained largely untouched for hundreds of years. La Isla Grande is home to about 800 islanders who sustain themselves mostly by fishing and farming, cut off from the modern world. With no running water and electrical power lines, daily life still generally revolves around when the sun rises and sets. But this idyll did the get attention of one vacationer, who built a palace, now abandoned.

That would be infamous King of Cocaine, the original El Patron, Pablo Escobar.

At the far side of the island, hidden and secluded between the tropical forest and the Caribbean Sea, lies a grandiose complex of luxury buildings. The decay of the structures mirrors the downfall of the man. At the height of his powers, Pablo Escobar was responsible for around 80 percent of the world’s cocaine. He headed the Medellín drug cartel, smuggling over fifteen tons of cocaine into the United States every day. His stock piling of cash was such that his brother Roberto Escobar estimated they were spending around $1,000 a month just on rubber bands to wrap around the never ending piles of money. His policy for smuggling cocaine into the US was based on what he called "plata o plomo," meaning “silver or lead”; that is, accept the bribe money or face the bullets. By 1989 he was worth an estimated $30 billion, with Forbes magazine listing him as one of the world’s ten wealthiest men. And Escobar was as ruthless as he was rich; from his stronghold fortress in Medellín, he fought a deadly drug war with the rival cartel de Cali, the Colombian government and the CIA.

The view from a broken window onto what was once lush gardens. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

As befitting one of the world’s richest men, Escobar’s life was filled with excess. As well as countless luxury cars, he had 15 planes and six helicopters. His opulent home in Puerto Triunfo, the Hacienda Napoles came complete with his own zoo of rhinoceros, giraffes, elephants, and a dinosaur park made with genuine prehistoric bones. He bankrolled his beloved football team, Atletico Nacional to the extent they became the first Colombian team to win the South American club championship, the Copa Libetadores. As detailed in the 2010 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, "The Two Escobars," corruption and bribery dominated Colombian soccer, and it is alleged many match officials were bought off in the process.

For his party home on La Isla Grande, Escobar’s plans were no less ostentatious. He commissioned a giant complex featuring a mansion, waterfront apartments, a palm court centered around an enormous swimming pool and helicopter landing pad. With over 300 rooms for guests and party goers, no expense was spared, even down to the gold shower heads in the bathrooms. Escobar’s playground resembled a strip from Miami’s South Beach in its 1980s heyday.

Pablo's pool. Note the clothes that line it—squatters have taken residence. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

To get to the island, which is only a few kilometers long, you have to find a special boat from Cartenga. Most of the islanders live around the main town of Orika, where impressive recycling and conservation efforts are based. There were no signs or organized trips to the Escobar estate: I asked a worker at an ecohotel about its location—known locally as  “la casa grande,” he agreed to take me there.

After hours of trekking through the Caribbean forest, first on canoe through dense mangrove swamps, then by bicycles with the suspension long gone, and finally by foot, I saw a glimpse of white concrete through the thick tropical undergrowth. The forest floor gave way to an old ornately tiled pathway that led into Escobar’s palace. A 30- foot luxury speedboat lay on its side, overgrown with tropical flowers as I walked through the desolate entrance.

Like some kind of coke-fueled Xanadu, the sprawling complex was already being reclaimed by nature. The once-lush gardens were now home to a family of giant wild pigs. Stepping into the main mansion, it had been decorated with white tile and marble, with the cracked walls still showing the 1980s color schemes of pastel blue and coral pinks. The lobby led to an immense courtyard, shaded with palm trees overlooking the Caribbean sea. The court was dominated by an oversized and drained pool. The last swimmers may have long departed but there was still evidence of recent human activity. Clothes had been laid out to dry along the chipped blue edge of the pool.

Great parties were once had here. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

Across the pool, emerging from another crumbling mansion, half a dozen men stepped out into the sunlight, silent, and holding rusted machetes.

My guide Jesús put a cautionary hand on my arm signaling me to be quiet. And with good reason; simply stepping foot anywhere near this place in the late 80s or 90s, would have had you killed on sight. Escobar maintained an army of ruthless bodyguards, led by ‘Popeye’ John Jairo Velasquez, who alone boasted that he’d murdered 300 people, and planned the deaths of over 3,000 hits, including his own wife.

Inside the mansion. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

Colombians have a complex relationship with Pablo Escobar. His ruthless criminal activity is well documented. But he also carefully cultivated a Robin Hood image with the working classes of Colombia. He built deluxe soccer fields in the barrios, and organized teams and leagues for the children. The street vendors of Cartagena, las Palenqueras sell t-shirts bearing the face of El Patron alongside replica jerseys of the Colombian hero and Real Madrid forward James Rodriguez. To what extent Escobar was a genuine benefactor for the working classes of Colombia, versus the hagiographical image he created around himself, is hard to judge. Certainly his public funeral resembled the passing of a popular king, and not a mass murderer. But his popularity in the working classes also benefitted him when he came to run for public office. Asking Jesús and other islanders on Isla Grande whether El Patron did anything for them, the answer was no. I was struck by the overt friendliness of the people of Orika and by the paradox of their island home. They’ve never had a police force  according to Jesús, yet through the forest was the fortress of the world’s most lethal drug baron. Jesús had only ever lived on the island, and he said growing up, you just never went near there.

The plants have grown into the property. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

As we walked towards the machete wielding Cartagneros, Jesús began to explain what I was doing. They agreed to let me take photographs and wander around, but just not of themselves. Jesús explained that they were squatters. One of them used his machete to cut us open coconuts, which we drank together in the shade of the giant abandoned mansion. I told him he lived in a nice house. “The biggest house,” he replied in Spanish, smiling.

Even in ruins, the place has a certain glamour. (Photo: Luke Spencer.)

In recent years, Colombia has undergone a marked renaissance, especially where tourism is concerned. And Escobar’s legacy is being readjusted accordingly. After his death, the Hacienda Napoles fell into the hands of the Colombian government. There are plans to turn the mansion into a drug museum, theme park, and zoo, complete with Escobar’s menagerie of exotic animals which still run wild in Puerto Tifuno. But his mansion in La Isla Grande, also government owned, has steadily fallen into ruin. Beyond the swimming pool, a series of broken down chalets overlooked the ocean. This is where visiting speedboats would have docked, and where heavily armed lookouts were posted. As with the larger structures, the individual chalet apartments have long since begun to deteriorate at the hands of the relentless Caribbean trade winds. For the people of Isla Grande, life carries on much as it did before Escobar arrived.

Our transportation infrastructure, especially roads and railways, are just about the least sexy elements of modern life that we’re completely reliant on. A peek into how they’re actually constructed, though, reveals that the ungodly huge and incredibly precise equipment is fascinating. We’ve gathered eight of the most watchable examples, from a machine that appears to “print” patterned brick roads to an enormous circular boring machine for tunnels.

 1. The RU-800

The RU-800s is not so much a construction machine as a reconstruction machine; it’s designed to break down existing railway tracks, move them out of the way, and place down new tracks, all at the same time.

 2. The Tiger Stone

The Tiger Stone may look like a road-printer, but it’s more like a machine that sorts coins: a few operators sit on its back and feed bricks into it, and it places them in the right spot and spits the finished pattern out, like unfurling a long brick tongue.

3.   Ducker Universal Ausleger

Something like an unholy chimaera of electric razor, tractor, and Roomba, the Ducker Universal Ausleger is the lawnmower to end all lawnmowers. For one thing, the mower is on a multi-hinged arm to allow it to cut at any angle. For another, it has multiple heads, with sensors on them, so it can cut grass even under highway guard-rails, sensing the poles and moving around them automatically.

 4. Big Bertha boring machine

Tunnels are essential in cities, to increase space in places where space is at a premium (at least, in cities not constantly at risk of earthquakes). Big Bertha, the world’s largest tunnel borer, is a great example, used in Seattle to create massive tunnels for transit.

 5. Krupp Bagger 288

When it was first built in 1978, the Krupp Bagger 288, a mobile strip-mining machine, was the biggest moving land vehicle in the world. It’s designed to remove turf to prepare for strip-mining, and can excavate the equivalent of a football field dug to 30 feet deep, per day.

 6. "The Zipper Truck"

The “Zipper Truck,” from Barrier Systems, creates a near-impenetrable median barrier. The barriers are wrapped in steel and filled with concrete, according to Gizmodo, and is used for one particular purpose: moving those medians back and forth, to create more lanes as needed.

 7. RCE Swing Loader Series 5

You might be surprised that a piece of metal thick and tough enough to support a train would need threading. But the railway ties are long enough to bend like noodles--bad news for trains, which need them to be as straight as possible. That’s where the RCE Swing Loader Series 5 comes in.

8. Plasser & Theurer Unimat 09-16/4S

The Plasser & Theurer Unimat 09-16/4S may look like a New York City garbage train, but it’s actually a ballast tamper. Ballast, the gravel-type stuff in railway tracks, can help support the tracks and make them more stable, but they need to be packed in tightly. This used to be done manually, by, like, guys with hammers. Machines like this one pack them in much more efficiently, and can also help to realign the tracks while they tamp.

The Evoluon (Photo: Daniel Volmer on Wikipedia) 

Logic tells us that UFOs are going to come from another planet, but given that they haven't yet, it seems increasingly unlikely that some space-faring discus is going to show up on our planetary doorstep. However this may be just as well since we've got more than enough flying saucers right here on Earth.

Spurred on by alien mania, UFOs have popped up all over the world in the form of junky outsider art, whimsical water towers, and even a McDonalds. Put on your tin foil hats and take a look at eight of the Earth's homemade spaceships.

1. STARSHIP PEGASUS
Italy, Texas

Those aliens are leaving each other hangin. (Photo: Jason Eppink on Flickr)

Created as a roadside ode to Star Trek, Texas' Starship Pegasus once operated as a restaurant. The faux ship is modeled like an off-brand Enterprise with a rounded dome in the front (which housed the restaurant) and a pair of long nacelles attached to the back. The space-themed eatery in the ship closed years ago, leaving the ship derelict, but as of 2010 the creator of the Pegasus has reopened the space as a farmers/flea market.

To boldly go where no rest stop has gone before. (Photo: Adam Bartlett on Flickr)

2. NAVE ESPACIAL DE VARGINHA
Varginha, Brazil

We can all claim to have seen a flying saucer now. (Photo: Oluap2512 on Wikipedia)

The Brazilian city of Varginha is a South American version of Roswell, New Mexico, forever linked to a supposed alien happening. Supposedly an alien being was spotted moseying around town in 1996, and as the story spread people quickly began spotting UFOs in the skies, and spreading rumors of a government cover-up. As the city became a hotspot for alien hunters and their ilk, a water tower was erected that was topped with a flying saucer. Should aliens ever return to the area, reports of people seeing flying saucers will be a bit easier to swallow, because everyone passing the water tower sees one every day.

 I'm not sure people should be drinking anything that was stored in a UFO. (Photo: ubirajararodrigues51 on Wikipedia)

3. UFO WELCOME CENTER
Bowman, South Carolina 

 
Aliens may be welcome, but I can see how this might seem a bit creepier to humans. (Photo: mogollon_1 on Flickr)

Many of the Earthbound ships on this list were created as a kind of welcome wagon for potential alien visitors, however South Carolina's UFO Welcome Center is unique for being the work of one man. Jody Pendarvis created the welcome center out of scrap metal, wood, and random pieces of detritus. The stacked saucers were cobbled together in the hopes that should extraterrestrials ever make it to our planet, they could find a friend in Pendarvis (who is also known to sleep in the ships as they have better air conditioning than his bedroom).

The writing on that pontoon says "UFO-MAN." (Photo: mogollon_1 on Flickr)

4. EVOLUON
Eindhoven, Netherlands

See, now that looks like it could actually be a spaceship. (Photo: Tnarik Innael on Flickr)

The beauty of a flying saucer is that it is really easy to draw. In fact this UFO-inspired museum-cum-conference-center was initially designed on a napkin. From that circular sketch the Evoluon was born. A space-age tribute to the future, the center was created as a museum but eventually closed, only to be reopened as a state of the art conference center. Unlike some of the other creations on this list, the Evoluon actually looks like it might be space-worthy.

Yes. Even UFOs have back parking lots. (Photo: Playing Futures on Flickr)

5. SPACESHIP HOUSE
Signal Mountain, Tennessee

Check out this swingin' space pad! (Photo: Atlas Obscura)

Who wouldn't want to live in a spaceship? The blank house-ship hidden in the woods of Signal Mountain, Tennessee looks like a UFO from a black-and-white movie. It stands on four stilts and features a staircase entryway that drops down from the underside in dramatic fashion. The vessel was built in 1972 and despite its general ship shape, it still projects the era in its actual construction. Should aliens ever find this house, they'd probably think it looked, "groovy."

 Just a cozy little cottage in the woods that might also be from the retro-future. (Photo: Atlas Obscura)

6. UFO LANDING PAD
St. Paul, Alberta

We're gonna need a bigger pad. (Photo: Heterodyne on Wikipedia)  

The welcome center for this centennial monument to the future is shaped like a flying saucer, but really the incredible part of this spot is the landing pad. Set-up in 1967, the center hopes to welcome alien life with a (rather small) spot to put down their ship. The circular tourist center itself offers a peek into the world of alien speculation. Perhaps most amazingly the landing pad has its own phone number (1-888-SEE-UFOS) where Canadians can call in and report their sightings.

7. ROSWELL MCDONALD'S
Roswell, New Mexico

I'm lovin' it. (Photo: Ben Barnett on Flickr)

As possibly the hub of extraterrestrial mania in the United States, just about everything in the city of Roswell, New Mexico has some kind of alien theme. Thus it comes as no wonder that when McDonald's decided to create a flagship restaurant there, they built their own flying saucers. Covered in neon lights, the franchise comes to life at night, looking surprisingly vibrant for a fast food joint. Should the first UFO to land on our planet come looking for reasonably priced food product in a family-friendly attitude, the Earth is prepared.

This restaurant seems pretty outlandish for a franchise that prides itself on sameness. (Photo: AllenS on Wikipedia) 

Wooden ex voto and photos that line the walls of the room. (Photo: Sarah Odedina.)

The Brazilian city of Salvador has reputably 365 churches, one for each day of the year. All are world heritage sites—their tiles from 17^th century Portugal, their walls painted with gold, their architects masters of the baroque but Igreja Nossa Senhor Do Bonfim is perhaps the most special.   Inside the simple, white-walled structure, the faithful can be bestowed with healings and blessings—with a particular kind of religious artifact, the ex-voto. 

Igreja Nossa Senhor do Bonfim, Salvador, Brasil as seen during the approach to the church. (Photo: Sarah Odedina.) 

The church itself was begun in 1745 and finished being built in 1772 . The main room is typically packed, as many travelers come to worship, but it is in a room to the left of the knave that the unique nature of the church becomes clear.

Worshippers watching a Sunday service in the main church from the ex voto room. (Photo by Sarah Odedina.)

In this small room the walls, ceilings, and even parts of the floor are covered in ex-voto.  Ex-voto are tokens left by people praying for recovery from illness, safe return of loved ones from wars, healthy delivery of a longed for child or people giving thanks for a kidney transplant, miraculous survival of a car accident, the good fortune for buying their first house or opening a business. And the ex-voto are bold and clear statements: Photographs of children before and after tumor removal, wax or wooden effigy’s of breasts and kidneys, legs and arms, a football shirt, or photo of the epaulettes someone received on promotion in the military police, and a letter imploring for success in exams.  

Fita de Lembranca are ribbons that are tied to the railings outside the church marking prayers made by visitors. (Photo: Sarah Odedina.)

Each day the number of objects changes; some removed and replaced by others more pressing or more present. The feeling in the room is emotional, as sobs are often heard echoing through the space.

This tradition dates back centuries. Upstairs in the church is a museum with ex-voto over the ages—paintings of ships wrecked on rocks painted by a lone survivor, a bullet and a dented coin placed in the church by someone who survived death at the hands of a robber, kidney stones preserved after an operation and brought to the church to demonstrate thanks,  spectacles, and crutches abandoned following miraculous cures, naval caps line the wall on the way up the stairs marking promotions and the shirts from players in different Brazilian world cup winning teams.

Wax ex-voto hanging from the ceiling of the small room. (Photo: Sarah Odedina.) 

And if the ex-voto practice isn’t enough of an expression of gratitude, the church has another fascinating tradition. On the Thursday before the third Sunday in January each year ,the faithful of the Candomble religion, with tens of thousands of revelers, walk the six kilometers from the lower city in the centre of Salvador to the Bonfim church and wash the steps in thanks and devotion to Oxala, a local god.  The practice is said to have been started by a devotee who vowed to wash the entire church each year in gratitude for surviving the war with Paraguay that ended in 1870; others began to join the practice in thanks for the blessings that they too had enjoyed during the past year.  

Soon the annual thanks giving had been adopted by worshippers of Candomble and in 1889 the then Bishop banned the supplicants from entering the church and since then the washing has involved only the front steps of the church and followers of Candomble who worship at the church in respect of Oxala continue to do so outside, not entering but drawn by its power nonetheless.