Canada
Île d'Anticosti
An island bigger than PEI with 200 white-tailed deer per resident and zero stoplights.
Île d'Anticosti is larger than Prince Edward Island, but it has roughly 200 permanent residents, approximately 160,000 white-tailed deer, and zero traffic lights. The French chocolate magnate Henri Menier bought the entire island in 1895 as his private hunting estate. The deer have been multiplying ever since.
Anticosti sits in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Québec, accessible by air from Sept-Îles or Havre-Saint-Pierre. Vauréal Falls drops 76 metres into a canyon of Ordovician limestone layered with 450-million-year-old marine fossils. The deer-to-human ratio is staggering — roughly 800 deer per resident — a consequence of Menier's introduction of a breeding population over a century ago. No cellphone signal covers most of the island. The disconnection is absolute: no traffic lights, no fast food, no schedule beyond the weather and the deer.
Solo
Anticosti's total disconnection — no signal, no crowds, no schedule — combined with the absurd deer population and the fossil canyons, makes it one of the most unusual solo wilderness experiences in eastern Canada.
Friends
A group trip to Anticosti — hunting, fishing, canyon hiking, and the absurdity of 160,000 deer on one island — is a story-generating adventure that friends retell for decades.
- The island is larger than Prince Edward Island but has only about 200 permanent residents — and roughly 160,000 white-tailed deer.
- Vauréal Falls drops 76 metres into a canyon of Ordovician limestone layered with 450-million-year-old marine fossils.
- Henri Menier, a French chocolate magnate, bought the entire island in 1895 as a private hunting estate.
- No traffic lights, no fast food, no cellphone signal across most of the island — the disconnection is absolute.
Wild venison is the local staple — grilled, stewed, or smoked by the islanders.
Fresh Atlantic salmon from the Jupiter River, one of the continent's finest salmon rivers.
Wistman's Wood
England
Twisted ancient oaks dripping with moss in a silence so deep it hums.
Imber
England
A ghost village frozen in 1943 where wildlife has reclaimed the empty cottages.
Gilf Kebir
Egypt
Prehistoric swimmers painted on cave walls in the deep Sahara, from when this wasteland was green.
Great Sand Sea
Egypt
Sand ridges higher than buildings stretching to the Libyan border, hiding shards of cosmic glass.
Cape Dorset (Kinngait)
Canada
The print-making capital of the Arctic — Inuit artists carve stone and stories into polar silence.
Ferryland
Canada
Picnic on a headland above a 17th-century colony while icebergs drift past and puffins wheel.
Mount Robson
Canada
The Canadian Rockies' highest peak rarely reveals its summit — clouds guard it like a secret.
Thetford Mines
Canada
Open-pit asbestos mines swallowed half the town — the craters remain, eerie and vast.