This piggybacks off the biggest thrill thread, but I want to draw a distinction here.
For this answer, it must be something that most of us could do given roughly $200 and a free trip to anywhere (relatively convenient) in the world. So it can’t be Everest and it can’t be piloting a chopper through heavy fire. It also can’t be something on private property or inaccessible for any reason.
It’s harder than it sounds to come up with something. Interesting things typically aren’t available to the masses, or else they are no longer interesting (I’m sure Paris is cool and all, but walking around taking pictures seems pretty generic)
The best thing that comes to mind for me was riding a bicycle down Pike’s Peak. I went down with guides and about 20-30 other riders. We stopped every mile or two so that the slowest riders could catch up with the fastest riders. I would estimate that it was approachable for moderately healthy people age 12-65. It was actually much safer than it sounds. It could be rode at your own pace, whether that be 5mph or 45mph.
Whitewater rafting is fun as well, but I’d say that the strain to do that was far greater than biking downhill. That would be a limiting factor for many.
On vacation once. In north west Florida. There is wolf preserve. LARGE amount of land fenced in. You pay something like $25. You get a couple hour tour. You are right there with the Wolfs.
Its a non profit. I generally get upset at most zoo like places because I think “poor enclosed animals”…not this place so much. Just might be the only place in the world like it. Damn, need to go there again before some kid gets eaten by one and they are sued out of existence.
Hmmm. Sort of a narrow definition of “interesting”, isn’t it? I don’t know if The Most Interesting Man in the World would come up with much, because all the interesting things he’s doing *are *exclusive and inaccessible.
For the purpose of this poll, though, scuba diving on Bonaire and going down to 120 feet is probably the best I’ve got. It was dark and cold, and my dive computer was ticking off minutes like seconds.
I think I paid $300 for my five-day canoe safari down the Zambezi river. Days were dodging hippos and watching elephants play on the banks. Nights were drinking cheap wine under the stars listening to the lions. My guide was amazing, and the whole experience was just incredible (though at times a little terrifying.
It would have to be the two African safaris that we took; one in Botswana, ultimately ending up at Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe; and the other in Tanzania, seeing Ngorongoro Crater, Oldupai Gorge, and spending our last night celebrating New Years Eve on the Serengeti.
These were the experiences of a lifetime; if you ever scrape together the money and the opportunity, DO NOT pass it up.
Given the constraints of the OP, I think going for a ride in an actual (not-attached-to-rails, non-Disneyland) submarine during my last trip to Honolulu. Made even more “interesting” by the hero dad who [slightly gross spoiler]
literally CAUGHT his 9-year-old daughter’s vomit in his hands/arms and held on to it for several minutes until one of the crew was able to get him a roll of paper towels. The poor girl was ill the entire ride, though.I think the cost of the ride was about $50.
I haven’t done a lot of interesting things but I would have to rate exploring woodlands I am not familiar with for reptiles and amphibians which I either just view or catch and release. Mississipi and Louisiana were my favorites.
Participating in a “Doing Da Vinci” project for a discovery channel show would also rank up there. I was called in as a bow building expert to build a giant bow to power a catapult.
I went to Space Camp when I was in 6th grade. It was super awesome interesting, yet I still felt they were pandering to 6th graders. So I felt like there was a lot more interesting stuff they didn’t want us touching.
I worked a couple of college summers at a hospital. At that time, as an employee, if you wanted to, you could sign up to witness a surgery or an autopsy. I signed up for the autopsy. It was absolutely fascinating to watch what had been a human being taken apart like a puzzle. Most of the employee witnesses didn’t make it through the entire procedure, but I was riveted.
The most interesting thing I’ve done is break into our high school library with a couple of buddies just to steal some books we liked. Taking an episode of “Bonanza” for inspiration, we dissolved a whole lot of styrofoam in gasoline to make a lot of instant glue. We hid in the bushes under the window until every student, teacher and admin had gone home, and tied the cycle of the guard’s rounds with our activities. We climbed to the second floor windows, painted one glass pane with glue, pasted it over with cloth, and bashed it in with a hammer. Then we snuck in and helped ourselves. To this day, we haven’t told anyone else.
We did try to make an atom bomb once, but using lead instead of enriched uranium. We never got around to getting the right explosive/implosive material. But we were willing to try making nitro. Acid and glycerine were readily available.
Standing in warm clear water with the rays swimming around me in Cayman Islands. It was one of those “how did I get here” moments since I don’t get out much.
I’d love to swim with manta rays. They are amazing…
My coolest sea-life encounter was not so fun at the time. The purple flag was flying at Miramar Beach in Florida, but nobody was really paying attention to it. Everyone was swimming/wading, etc. Kids were out. So a buddy and I went with that herd mentality and started snorkeling out towards the sandbar. At some point, my buddy tapped me on my leg. He pointed to a jellyfish. We started looking around, and realized we were surrounded. Not as dense as in Finding Nemo, but at any given point, we could see 4-5 jellyfish within the 15-20ft visible range of the water. There had to be thousands floating just out of the range of most of the swimmers.
My buddy ended up getting nailed on the leg. I made it out without getting tagged. We were both really itchy afterwards. I did some research and found out that we were likely itchy due to tiny little baby jellyfish that get caught in body hair and sting. It’s like a burny itch that just sucked for a few hours. We identified three different types of jellyfish. None were box jellys, which are not regional to the Gulf. None were deadly either, so that’s nice.
On that same trip I was able to follow a stingray for about 20 minutes as it burrowed down in different holes. It let me get 4-5 feet away, and was not at all aggressive. I did not try to handle it a la Steve Irwin, though.
I got to watch a Cleveland Indians baseball game in a suite along with former Indian player and manager Mike Hargrove and his wife. It was just me, the Hargroves, and 4 of my friends. I picked his brain about baseball and he asked me to fix his laptop (!! I told him that he should ask the Indians’ IT department for help)
I hitchhiked and bussed around the coast of Iceland with a friend. We camped and stayed in hostels, so the cost might have been a little more than $200, but not much.
Went on a backpacking/motorcycle touring adventure to the White mountains in New Hampshire. It was about 1,000 kms each way, made for a long day in the saddle. Spent 4 full days in the bush backpacking the Appalachian trail. Loved it.
Missed the edit window: Costs minus the motorcycle travel would have been right around the $200 mark. The campsites are pretty cheap, food and 1 propane canister were the only significant consumables.
