Batteries for my torch:

I love abandoned places. My palms break-out into a little sweat at the thought of silently exploring empty industrial facilities, grain elevators, sewer tunnels, catacombs etc... Here are my top three infiltration fantasies:

Number 3 is the abandoned hospital near the apartment we lived in while attending language school in Tarragona. The sprawling complex sat on a bluff overlooking the sea. Missionaries believed it use to be an insane asylum (bunch of chickens...)



It is surrounded by tall, rusty fencing and is inhabited by goats and guard dogs. I never slid under the barricades because I didn't want to get arrested having been in Spain for just a couple of months.



However I could see blue tile on some of the walls which made me think of surgical rooms, and all of the iron gates had stylized crosses welded on them. Weirdest thing was the cut-rock staircase access to the rocky beach-cove below. Maybe I'll go back.

Number 2 is the ghost city of Varosha in Cyprus. Back in the early '70s it was quite the happening place...



Once a tourist destination rivalling Spain's Marbella and Majorca, this southern part of the ancient port city of Famagusta has been a ghost resort since 1974.



According to sources "15,000 largely Greek Cypriot inhabitants fled after Turkish troops invaded the island - an attack launched in response to a coup attempt by Greek nationalists aiming to adjoin the island to Greece." Turkish forces occupied Varosha, but then withdrew, putting up a ring of barbed wire and barricades around it. For 32 years, it has stood empty.



Number 1 without a doubt is the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyonyang, North Korea. No way people can infiltrate here without risking an international incident... Here is a satellite photo that gives you a sense of the enormity of this death-star like structure.



The Ryugyong's 3,000 rooms and 7 revolving restaurants were to open in June 1989 for the "World Festival of Youth and Students" but problems with building methods and materials delayed it. Japanese newspapers estimated the cost of construction was $750 million. Sources say construction stopped indefinitely in 1992 due to famines and power shortages.



Official pictures of Pyongyang often show the building illuminated at night, but this is due to airbrushing. The basic structure has no windows or fixtures of any kind. Sub-standard concrete used in this monumental skeleton ensure that the buckling elevator shafts will never be used. Reports say that crumbling chunks of it sometimes drop onto the deserted pavilions 105 floors below...



There are many dead places like this throughout the world. I remember exploring the deserted neighborhood in Merriam before they built the Hen-House, Home Depot, Cinemark complex. Roamer and I had the whole place to ourselves. It was exhilerating to pick any house on any block and walk right in to peer into the closets (some of which still had clothes in them!) That muggy afternoon was the first time I had a Hershey's "Mint" chocolate bar.

Check out the "Infiltrate!" link on the bottom of my blog listings if you love this stuff like I do... There are great first-hand stories and pics (even the Queen Mary!) And lets not forget Chernobyl, that nuclear reactor meltdown that happened 20 years ago in Russia. Can't live there no more, but nobody has told the packs of wolves that are moving in...







(Chernobyl pics courtesy of www.kiddofspeed.com)