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4 Days, 3 Nights, 1 Catastrophe

By Matt Mabe

4 Days, 3 Nights, 1 Catastrophe

Had enough of sun and surf? For your next vacation, consider visiting a disaster zone. Tours by Isabelle of New Orleans reports that some 10,000 people have forked over $60 for its three-hour tour of the Lower Ninth Ward and other areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. In Ukraine, $135 will buy you an all-day bus tour of Chernobyl. Stops include the sarcophagus covering the nuclear reactor’s still-smoldering core and the nearby ghost town of Pripyat. “Some people go just to hear the buzz of the Geiger counter,” says organizer Sergei Ivanchuk. Other tour operators offer trips to the Caribbean Island of Montserrat, whose capital was wiped out by a 1995 volcanic eruption, and the former Yugoslavia, where the wreckage of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign is still on view. After all, how many people can turn to their loved one and say: “Honey, we’ll always have Chernobyl.