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Originally Posted by CaliNative
I like your list, concentrated on the polar areas most likely to sadly change. I forgot to add Patagonia and the Falkland/Malvinas Islands to my original list above. Love these lonely places at the ends of the world. One place I'd add in addition is the Kuergelen Islands in the cold polar sea north of Antarctica, far southeast of Madagascar (which I'd also like to visit). It is claimed by France, but I'm not sure if is possible to visit. In the 19th century it was sometimes visited by whaling ships. I'd also like to visit the Galapagos Islands, so important to Darwin's discoveries. They are rapidly changing as more people move there and the species Darwin described are in trouble because of. pop growth and global climate change. Finally, some of the high mountain ranges in the Sahara Desert. One range in northern Chad or southern Libya has 11,000 foot peaks and some isolated villages where people live as they did hundreds of years ago. I believe one of the mountain areas is called Haggar and the other Tarraghansett or something like that. Maybe these areas are unsafe, not sure. Certainly remote. Oh, one more, if it becomes possible to visit Russia again, the Kamchatka penninsula. Volcanos, tigers, wilderness, unpopuIated. Sounds fun.
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Yeah I concentrated on places that I reasonably have a chance to go, and I figured Kerguelen was too difficult (it's not possible to go there as a tourist, and while I might be able to go there for research if I'm creative enough, it's hard enough to get to that it's unreasonable). Other seemingly impossible destinations are places like Bouvet. Also Afghanistan and Iran, though for different reasons. The highlands of Northern Africa are also intriguing, though not sure about the logistics.
One place I forgot (though has similar political difficulties to Kamchatka) is Novaya Zemlya, which apparently you can (/could have, prior to sanctions) take a cruise to. Though I don't know what that entails... the dream would be to cruise through the Matochkin Strait, but I imagine that's not possible both for technical and political issues (I think the Russian Nuke base is on the straight).
The biggest stretch on my list is probably the McMurdo Dry Valleys. I'm likely going to McMurdo again in 2 years, but getting to the Dry Valleys requires either convincing a helicopter pilot or having a legitimate reason to be there, which I might be able to concoct but is perhaps difficult. I actually do have a legitimate research reason to go up Mt. Erebus if I can convince NSF (though... let's be honest, the primary motivation would be to get up there; not sure how close to the lava pit I would be comfortable getting though). Union Glacier is relatively easy to go to as a tourist, but $$$, though I might be able to swing it for other reasons (e.g. if our balloon payload lands there and I end up on the recovery team---I quite regretfully passed up a chance to be on the recovery team our previous balloon payload, though that landed near Pole and I got to go to Pole for other reasons a few years later).