Tourists caught with their pants down

Quite literally. The web site for one of Norway's biggest tourist attractions has started publishing photos of visitors who use the nearby woods to relieve themselves.

Caught in the act. PHOTO: VORINGFOSSEN.COM

Officials at the waterfall Vøringfossen, on the road between Bergen and Oslo, have grown weary of all the tourists who let their own water fall on the trails and bushes in the popular area.

"Too many people are using the woods as a toilet," Lise Nilsen, who's responsible for Vøringfossen's web site, told newspaper Bergens Tidende.

That means other people "are stepping on excrement and the trails stink of urine," Nilsen said. "Something had to be done."

So a sign was posted, asking tourists to please use public toilets and not the woods. The sign also warned tourists that they may be photographed, and that the photos could be publicized on the waterfall's web site.

Tourism officials in Norway aren't happy.

"This is an unacceptable approach to the problem of a lack of sanitary facilities," said Nina Broch Mathisen, of Innovasjon Norge's office in Hordaland. "I've never seen anything like this, and I think the photos should be removed. It's destructive for tourism in (the area)."

Several thousand tourists visit the waterfall every day. The local cafeteria adjacent to the waterfall has just one public toilet, from 1956. Owners of the land around the waterfall and local government officials reportedly have argued for years over how upgraded sanitary facilities should be financed.

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