This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
We’ve all been on some extreme trips. But how many of us can claim to have travelled to the very edge of the world? I can… sort of. Allow me to explain.
I made several trips for my latest book The Conspiracy Tourist, but the strangest was undoubtedly to the island of Fogo, off Canada’s Newfoundland coast. I was looking into flat Earth theory: the idea that the Earth is a flat, round disk, surrounded by an ice wall. When I dived deeper, I discovered a splinter group of people who not only believe that the Earth is flat, but that it’s square. Logically, in their eyes, this means that there are four corners: Hydra in Greece, Papua New Guinea, the Bermuda Triangle and Fogo Island.
So, this was why I found myself on a road trip from St John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, to Fogo. I was accompanied by John, a square-flat-earther with a love of the band Rush, which made the trip feel longer than it actually was.
To get to Fogo Island from St John’s involves driving through Gander, where you really must call into the airport. Back in the 1950s, Gander Airport was a big deal as the place transatlantic flights stopped to refuel. Locals hung out at the airport every night hoping to spot The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe or Frank Sinatra sitting at the bar waiting to travel on.
Once technology made the stopovers redundant, this beautiful passenger terminal became frozen in time, like a Mad Men set. Even now, Eames chairs sit expectantly in the ladies’ powder room patiently awaiting the return of famous bottoms.
Moving on, we took the ferry to Fogo from the wonderfully named Farewell Harbour. After an hour and half, we arrived at our final destination. Fogo is tiny, with a population of just over 2,000 people. Think the Falkland Islands but inhabited by fishermen with accents that are a curious mix of Irish and West Country, a haunting link to their ancestors, who first landed here in the 17th century in search of fishy treasure. Almost every weather-beaten house has a slightly off-kilter hut suspended just above the water on thin wooden stilts. Back in the day, these would have been used to dry the fish, but the fishing industry was shut down in 1992 when cod stocks ran out.
The local economy was saved by a lady called Zita Cobb, an islander who made a lot of money in Toronto during the tech boom. She decided to return to Fogo to set up a charity called Shorefast, which aimed to both revive culture on the island and reinvent the economy. To do this, she built a quite extraordinary hotel, Fogo Island Inn, designed by Canadian architect Todd Saunders. It sits like a vast beached ocean liner on stilts and is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever visited. The hotel employs lots of locals and uses a wide array of local products, and rooms don’t come cheap: from $1,975 (£1,167) a night.
But I wasn’t on Fogo for its luxury tourism. I was on a serious expedition to discover the edge of the Earth. So, after a brief visit to the Flat Earth Museum, one of the world’s least impressive scientific institutions, we drove to the far end of the island, to Fogo village itself. Looming ominously above the wooden houses in the grey bay below it was Brimstone Head, a giant lump of weathered granite. Once we’d climbed this, we could supposedly gaze over the edge of the Earth and glimpse the ice wall.
Half an hour later, after a bracing but not arduous climb, we hit the summit. We gazed out expectantly… at the sea, which stretched to the horizon. No sign of the edge.
John was more than disappointed. He decided we needed a boat to explore further. So we found one. With a storm brewing, the captain told us we had an hour before things became unsafe. These, after all, are the treacherous waters that sank the Titanic. We headed out and found nothing but endless sea.
John became angry. He accused both the captain and myself of being in league with Bill Gates and claimed that we were simply going around in circles to confuse him. My life flashed before me. I had visions of my epitaph should this go pear-shaped: ‘Comedian drowned by enraged flat-earther yards from the edge of the world’. What with me being something of a professional prankster, people probably wouldn’t even believe it.
It’s not easy being an intrepid explorer. But it does allow you to meet people of all persuasions, and make your own conclusions about the weird and wonderful world we all live in. A place that, for now at least, we can all still travel around… or across.
The Conspiracy Tourist: Travels Through a Strange World by Dom Joly is published by Robinson, £22. For tickets to Dom Joly: The Conspiracy Tour 2024 stage show click here.
Published in the March 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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