The List: Disaster Vacations

MARIO TAMA/Getty Images Hurricane Holiday
The place: New Orleans, La.

The tour: Bus tours of neighborhoods ravaged by the 2005 hurricane and its aftermath.

The itinerary: Gray Line New Orleans offers a $35 tour titled, Hurricane KatrinaAmericas Worst Catastrophe, which busses tourists from the French Quarter past the Superdome and Convention Center and into destroyed and still-vacant neighborhoods. The Big Easybased company Tours by Isabelle takes visitors to the site of levee breaches for $53 a person. New Orleans residents have expressed irritation with the tours, which inch through their neighborhoods as riders snap photos of the devastation and even walk among the debris, but tour officials insist theyre providing much-needed public education about the extent of the hurricanes wrath.
ATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images Radioactive R R
The place: The Chernobyl nuclear reactor and surrounding villages, site of the infamous 1986 nuclear meltdown

The tour: Day-trips by van and bus from Kiev, Ukraine

The itinerary: Thousands of visitors each year make the trek to this Soviet time capsule; the villages near Chernobylfrom which more than 100,000 residents fledhave remained largely uninhabited since that fateful day. For a few hundred dollars, visitors receive a change of clothes and shoes, sightsee around the abandoned town of Pripyat, and stop near the Red Forest that was created by falling radioactive material. They can also observe Reactor 4 from a safe distance of less than half a mile, visit with residents who have returned to the area, and dine on a lunch prepared and delivered from outside the contaminated zone. Visitors even receive their own personal dosimeter to measure radiation in the atmosphere.
LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images A Flood of Tourists
The place: The Southeast Asian region devastated by the 2004 Asian tsunami, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand

The tour: Package trips to tsunami-affected areas that combine R R with volunteer and reconstruction projects

The itinerary: Because many of the regions hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami depended on tourism, many industry experts worried that the devastation would only be compounded by the lack of future visitors. But to the surprise of many, travelers have continued to flock to the ruined areas, often under the guise of reconstruction tourism. Travel agencies, including Britains Different Travel, offer package deals that enable tourists to travel to Sri Lanka and southern Thailand to combine beach-hopping and city sightseeing with volunteer work such as rebuilding houses and schools and assisting at local orphanages. In 2005, so many foreign backpackers flocked to Thai islands to assist with the recovery effort that one local organization, Help International Phi Phi, put them to work alongside locals, earning it one of Time Asias Heroes awards.
ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images Volcanic Vacation
The place: Mount St. Helens in southern Washington State

The tour: Climbing the active volcano that blew its top in May 1980

The itinerary: Climbing was again permitted in July 2006, after being suspended for two years due to the volcanos unpredictable activity. Although the volcano regularly spews steam, ash, and volcanic dust, it has settled into what the U.S. Forest Service considers a slow period (though authorities warn climbers that larger eruptions could occur at any time). One of the 10 essential items climbers should carry with them on their journey to the crater? Emergency shelter.
ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images Trip to the Poorhouse
The place: Sprawling slums around Brazilian cities called favelas

The tour: Guided tours by foot and car through economic disaster zones, such as the illegal and desperately poor shantytowns of Rocinha and Vila Canoas in Rio de Janeiro

The itinerary: Local guides usher tourists through Brazils underbelly, urban neighborhoods where drug gangs reign supreme, offering the social services and justice that the government has neglected to provide. In Rio, where a fifth of the residents live in favelas that abut some of the citys richest locales, tourists can visit the homes of favela residents, attend locally run schools and medical clinics, and admire the infrastructure projects built by crime barons. To make up for rubbernecking Brazils worst poverty, tour operators often give a portion of the takings to social projects in the neighborhoods.