#13 Coolest Place - Shuar Indians in the Amazon, Ecuador

The camp in Miazal, Ecuador is a hardcore Amazon experience with shamen performing rituals, white water rafting in dugout canoes, learning to shoot blowguns, and plenty of jungle time. One of the high points is the three hour hike through heavy jungle to their sacred waterfalls. You can touch both hot and cold running waterfalls, just five feet apart, coming at you like a fire hose. The entire area is bright orange from all of the iron in the water and Shuar say this has healing properties.

The Shuar were also the inventors of head shrinking, but they no longer practice the ritual. In the past, if a Shuar man wanted to marry a woman, he would go to the father of the woman and ask permission. The father would only approve when the man killed an enemy and brought back his severed head. They would remove the skull from the flesh and sew it back up, also sewing the eyes and mouth shut to prevent bad spirits from exiting. After repeatedly filling the the head with hot sand and smoking it over a fire, it became the size of tennis ball.


It takes 3 planes to get to this remote area of the Amazon where the Shuar live, and the last plane lands on a slippery mud runway. Sitting in the copilot seat, I watched as mud flew up on the windshield and the plane fishtailed, thinking this is more like riding on a sled. Shortly after landing, we were hit by a flash flood with water that went up to our chests within 10 minutes. Then we got in dugout canoe riding an inch above the water on and Amazon feeder river and manged not to sink arriving at camp to a smoking fire and comfortable hammocks. The first hour in Miazal, lets you know this is not going to be the usual adventure.

Best Time to Visit: It's on the equator so its always hot and humid year round
How Long to Stay: 3-6 days to get the full effect
General Costs: Moderate to expensive
What To Do: Visit sacred waterfalls, learn the Shuar culture, hike to other villages and the hot and cold waterfalls, have a shaman perform rituals diagnosing what is wrong with you.
UNESCO World Heritage Site? No

The List - Top 45 Coolest Places in the World

#2 - Bayonne Temple in Angkor Wat, Siem Riep, Cambodia

After 70 countries, hundreds of sites and 12 years of traveling, here is the ranked list of our coolest places in the world.

1 The Country of Myanmar
2 Angkor Wat, Cambodia (photo above)
3 Rock Cut City of Petra, Jordan
4 Dinosaur Expeditions
5 Moai of Easter Island
6 Underground Cities of Cappadocia, Turkey

7 Sossusvlei and the Namib Desert, Namibia
8 Cure Salee Festival of the Wodaabe in InGall, Niger
9 Helicopter to Mount Everest
10 Djenne Mosque and the Dogon, Mali
11 Registan in Samarkand, Uzbekistan
12 Rock Cut Churches of Lalibela, Ethipoia
13 In the Amazon with the Shuar, Ecuador
14 Tsechu Parties of Bhutan
15 Wildebeest Migration, Tanzania
16 Burning Man Festival, USA
17 Buddhist Temples of Tibet
18 Sahara Desert
19 African Safari, Botswana and Tanzania
20 Temples of Luxor, Egypt
21 Cuba
22 India - Taj Mahal and Rajasthan
23 Voodoo in Haiti
24 Machu Picchu, Peru
25 Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
26 Nepal
27 Borobodur and Prambanan Temples, Indonesia
28 Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina
29 Temple of Jupiter in Lebanon
30 Waking Up On Top of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
31 The Wild Wall, China
32 Morocco
33 Victoria Falls, Zambia and Zimbabwe
34 Fjords of Norway
35 Iguazu Falls, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay
36 Syria
37 Anasazi Cliff Dwellings, USA
38 Patagonia, Chile
39 Climb Cotopaxi, Ecuador
40 Terracotta Warriors of Xian, China
41 Grand Canyon, USA
42 Ephesus, Turkey
43 Moscow, Russia
44 IRA and Loyalist Graffiti in Northern Ireland
45 Alaska, USA

#6 - The Underground Cities of Cappadocia in Turkey, Held Up to 70,000 People

RANKINGS
So how did we rank them? We know we are biased and here’s what mattered:

• Novelty and surprise like Cappadocia and Easter Island.


• The combination of a stunning place and great history like Registan or Angkor Wat.


• Highly unique and very interesting cultures, like the Bhutanese, the Wodaabe and the Shuar Indians of the Amazon.


• Amazing visual beauty like Petra and Myanmar.


• Completely unique and "hard to get access to" situations like dinosaur hunting in Niger and dancing with a samba school in Carnival at the Sambadrome.


• We chose to rank many great natural areas like the Grand Canyon and Iguazu Falls much lower than great cultural and historical places.


• We strongly prefer places and cultures that are very different from the US and Europe.


• We are a generally underwhelmed by sites that are overpromoted and highly commercialized, like the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal, and rank them a lot lower than many people would.