Most remote place you've ever stayed

Makarora, New Zealand ... at a large house on the side of the road, halfway between Milford Sound (end of famous hiking trail) and Queenstown (adventure hub of NZ). Little wonder "Lord of the Rings" was shot on South Island of NZ ... beautiful scenery and hardly any people to get in the way.

 

Screwball's international leaning made me think of another remote place ...

Eleuthera, in the Bahamas. I was there 10 years ago and had to take a prop plane out of Nassau before the sun rose. The island is about 20 miles long from north to south and three miles wide, and nothing but pink sands, one restaurant/hotel and a Club Med. I was there for only two days - one which I spent the afternoon on a hammock overlooking the ocean. It was one of the most peaceful places I've ever visited.

 

OK, the naive girl from the West has a question. In states back East, such as PA and NY, can you ever really be in a remote location? Rural, sure, but do you ever really leave civilization? Looking at a map, it seems as if there is a town every five miles. I don't know if I'd consider that middle-of-nowhere.

 

Charles Town, West Virginia. No, no - not Charleston, Charles Town. I can't even explain the odd set of circumstances of how I ended up there - it was a bachelor's party gone horribly, horribly wrong - and I've never seen a smaller, more perplexing place than that. Hell, the waitress we had at dinner bragged about being a stripper at a local bar years back - and showed us a picture to prove it. Yama hama.

 

Yes, there is a way to be in a remote place. Try Garrett County, Maryland.

 

Van Horn, Texas -- though it's not that remote since it has the Chuy's mexican joint that John Madden visits from time to time. They even had a little shrine there for him.

Clarksdale, Miss. -- Home of the Delta Blues Museum.

Truly the most remote place I've been is Big Bend National Park, way down by the Rio Grande. You have to really want to get there because there's virtually nothing for about 75 miles in any direction.

 

Beat me to it with the Winslow reference. I couldn't resist calling my wife and former college roomie, prompting a "Where are you?" question, then coming back with the classic retort:

"Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona." And that was the highlight of the day.

As for others, let me add to the New Mexico litany with Hobbs (utterly without redeeming qualities), El Centro, California (the place they'd stick the enema in this state), followed closely by next-door-to-the-north neighbor Brawley.

I could add Gaylord, Mich. for sheer remoteness, but the town and where I stay is too cool to join such a rogues gallery of shitholes.

 

Bumblefuck, Yugoslavia.
Only trip to Europe was with the parents back in 1988, when I was 14. My sister married an Italian guy and they lived outside of Milan. We were there for two weeks, and being good Catholics, we made the trek to Medjugoria (sp?). Didn't see the Virgin Mary, but I did notice a lot of vendors selling porn as you walked into the village. On the way back, we rented a room in a little town along the Adriatic Sea. I remember a big festival on the beach that night. The locals were cooking mutton burgers and listening to some Kenny Rogers song through the PA system. Very weird. I was such a little nerd back then. Here I was, surrounded by all this culture and strangness, and all I wanted to do was play my Statis-Pro Baseball game that my Mom bought me at the airport in Nashville. Still am a nerd, because I wish like hell I still had that game. Other than that, I'd have to say Tompkinsville, Ky.

 

Drove through Charles Town this past summer. Ain't much there. That musta been an interesting night for you.

 

Papua New Guinea.

Went to cover a rugby league game in Port Moresby. It was pretty civil, despite the locals having never seen a female sports writer before. Coach of the PNG team gave me a necklace made of shells, which I suppose was unethical to accept, but if I didn't it would have been a national shame.

Still in Papua New Guinea, went to a tribal village in the Highlands to visit my friend Felicity, who was working for Reuters. Women weren't allowed to enter many adobes -- lots of them had weird god figures near the door, to ward off evil female spirits, or so we were told -- but Felicity was a beautiful blond and therefore got us into places few Westerners ever see. This was 10 years ago, doubt much has changed.
Now I have one of those weird figures at the door to my NY apartment; it wards off evil male spirits.

 

Lock it up, folks. We have a winner.

My cousin actually did his psychology PhD dissertation in New Guinea on the effects of the missionaries on the natives there. He lived there for nearly 9 years.

 

In the international category: Vilar Formoso, Portugal.

It's the last train stop east of Guarda before the Spanish border, up in the mountains of northeastern Portugal. I was there on a cultural exchange program.

Honorable mention: Mombeja, Portugal; a little farming village in the rolling plains/hills of Alantejo in the southern part of the country. Not really all that remote because Beja (about 40,000 residents) is only 10 minutes away.

Of course, with Portugal being roughly the size of Indiana, you're never more than a day's train travel from Lisbon and never more than four hours from either Lisbon or Porto.