Why would anyone take a tour of the island of Fukushima instead of taking photos in front of the Kyoto temples? Why, instead of going to a music festival, do you spend a weekend in a war weekend? And why, instead of following the path of the stars in Los Angeles, would you choose the path of the Manson Family?
There are people who do it, more and more. They prefer the "crazy, macabre and morbid", as New Zealand journalist David Farrier defines it. “I have always been drawn to the weirder side of life,” he says at the beginning of the Dark Tourist (Netflix) series, to explain why he travels to all those crazy, macabre, and morbid destinations, in search of the “ultimate tourism experiences.” black".
A nice radioactive walk in Fukushima.
Dark tourism in English, black, dark or thanatoturismo in Spanish. "A global phenomenon in which people eschew the ordinary and instead vacation in war zones, disaster sites and other unconventional destinations." It's like the anti-travel Instagram friendly. No pink beaches or infinity pools. The tanatotourists or dark tourists, as its name already anticipates, in principle, they are more interested in places where death plays a major role.
From concentration camps to the funeral rituals of indigenous Indonesian communities. From the house of a serial killer to suffering in his own skin the worst horror movie (only for the very brave: McKamy Manor).
It's not just about going to Mexico in the Day of the Dead, that too, but of be the first to enter cities or countries closed to foreigners, such as Myanmar or Kazakhstan. From finding as a local guide in Medellin to one of Pablo Escobar's thugs, for example, as Farrier does. And of not being afraid (or not too much) of radiation and stroll through Fukushima or bathe in a lake created by an atomic bomb.
The favorite souvenir of a dark tourist.
Farrier tries to explain why these types of trips are becoming more and more popular. They may not find as much media response or become viral images because they are not suitable for all sensitivities, but dark tourism is a booming sector. Extreme experiences, in many cases, for adrenaline junkies. And in all eight episodes (each one dedicated to a country, continent or area of the world) is finding the answers.
"Perhaps the ultimate goal of dark tourism is to feel happier to be alive," he says after walking through Fukushima, with still very high levels of radiation after the 2011 nuclear disaster; for him Suicide Forest at the foot of Mount Fuji, and Hashima, an island opposite Nagasaki that went from being the most densely populated place in the world to a ghost enclave.
He has doubts about why the tour of the cannibal and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the favorites for bachelorette parties, and he ends up understanding that trying to get into the head of someone who did something like that is the best form of escapism, of fleeing from our own reality. “Escape from normalcy to step into something unexpected”, he says after bathing in the atomic lake.
When, after the end of the JFK assassination tour in Dallas, tourists start taking photos with an actress dressed as Jackie, blood and all, she gets it too: One of the attractions of this black tourism is that it has no taboos.
In a robot hotel in Japan.
"Dark tourism is becoming more and more popular because people want to challenge their fears and prejudices by going to extraordinary places," he says after seeing how the Toraja, in Indonesia, dig up a woman who died 17 years ago to venerate her mummy with offerings and animal sacrifices. The same conclusion he draws after going through the voodoo initiation rite in Benin. Or meeting real vampires in New Orleans.
And yet, after uneventful visits to Turkmenistan, the forbidden or ghost city Famagusta in Cyprus, experiences that really put the traveler to the limit, he understands that the best thing about this type of dark tourism is “just realizing how good it is to come home”. Isn't that also a bit the end of every trip?
The best local guide? Popeye, Escobar's bloodiest thug.