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Travel guides tend to direct you to tourist traps. Atlas Obscura offers a slightly different service. They give you a heads up about the most awesomely bizarre destinations and eccentric points of interest on the planet.

We recently partnered with the self-described "compendium of the world's wonders, curiosities and esoterica" to provide Asylum readers with the type of travel suggestions only an Asylum reader could really appreciate.

Now, let's start off with one everyone can get behind: a giant pool of beer.

Starkenberger Beer Resort
The Austrian Starkenberger Beer Resort is a beer lover's paradise, offering a fully beer-centered vacation with beer trivia, beer history and, of course, beer drinking. But what really sets them apart is their beer saunas. Said to be the "world's only beer swimming pools," seven 13-foot pools of warm beer, each containing some 42,000 pints, await the visitor. Rich in vitamins and calcium, it is said that sitting in the beer is good for the skin, and "helps cure open wounds and psoriasis." Not surprisingly, drinking from the pool is ill-advised.

Devil's Swimming Pool
For those seeking a more adventurous swimming spot, there is the Devil's Swimming Pool, the world's highest and most dangerous infinity pool. A natural rock ledge at the very lip of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe creates a "safe" swimming area at the edge of this rushing waterfall. Adventuresome swimmers jump and dive into the enclosed patch of water to swim and have a look over the precipice of the 300-foot falls into the gorge below. A great time for anyone who is completely out of his mind.


Jellyfish Lake
Tired of swimming with dolphins? Try swimming with 10,000 jellyfish. One of 70 saltwater lakes that were once connected to the ocean but are now cut off, these isolated lakes became the perfect setting for a jellyfish population explosion. Feeding on quick-growing algae and with no predators to keep them in check, tens of thousands of jellyfish now completely pack the small lake. Though the jellyfish do have stingers, thankfully they are too small to be felt by humans. Otherwise Palau's Jellyfish Lake would be the name of an awesome horror movie.


Monticello Dam Morning Glory Spillway
Also known as the "World's Largest Glory Hole," swimming here would be ill advised. Located at the Monticello Dam at Lake Berryessa in Northern California, this gigantic drain acts as the lake's spillway. When the dam reaches capacity, the spillway swallows water at a rate of 48,800 cubic feet per second, emptying about 700 feet away through an enormous concrete pipe. The incredible sucking power of the drain is the reason swimming near it is such a bad idea, and in 1997, a UC-Davis graduate student was sucked into this glory hole while swimming and drowned.


Jason de Caires Taylor's Underwater Sculpture Garden
An artiste? Take a visit to Jason de Caires Taylor's Sculpture Garden, a gallery of underwater art that is visited by man and fish alike. Located between two and eight meters underwater, the collection of over 65 sculptures is home to dozens of fish species. Despite the fact that some of the pieces weigh as much as 15 tons, they are not impervious to the powers of the ocean. Taylor's first underwater work was torn to pieces by a hurricane. Today, however the pieces remain cemented to the ocean floor and provide an excellent artificial reef for artistic-minded fish.


Caño Cristales
Whether you think it is beautiful or disgusting-looking, "the most beautiful river in the world" is certainly unique. For a brief period each year, between the wet and dry seasons, this Colombian river's varieties of moss and algae bloom into a dazzling multicolored display, giving the Caño Cristales its other name, "river of five colors."


For more delightful ways to get wet visit the Atlas Obscura's Watery Wonders category.