Cap Haitien, Haiti. On a steep mountain top three thousand feet high above the north coast of Haiti, stands this staggeringly gigantic fortress.

It is the Citadelle Laferrière, revered by professional distortionists of history as "the greatest monument to black freedom in the Americas." What it really is instead is a monument to totalitarian insanity.

In 1807, the leader of a victorious slave army against the French named Henri Christophe (1767-1820) seized Haiti and proceeded to re-enslave his people. With their slave labor, he built La Citadelle – 20,000 slaves died under the lash or from utter exhaustion building it, hauling hundreds of cannons, tens of thousands of cannon balls, and millions of bricks and rocks 3,000 feet up the steep slopes to the site.

Finally, in 1820, Christophe’s slaves rebelled, his body dissolved in a huge vat of liquid lime, the mortar for the fortress’ bricks. The Citadelle has been a deserted ruins ever since. I was the only visitor there. So much for "the monument to black freedom." Haiti has never experienced a single day of freedom in its entire existence to this very day.

Haiti, in other words, is not only a failed state – for over 200 years, it has always been a failed state. Tragically, the odds are high it always will be. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #265 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

West of the Himalayan giants of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri in Nepal lies a roadless high wilderness inhabited only by Tibetan nomads called Dolpa. The region is named after them, Dolpo. The Dolpa practice the ancient pre-Buddhist animist religion of Tibet called Bön. They worship sites of nature they consider holy. And holiest of all is the Sacred Lake of Phoksundo.

The Dolpa consider the blue of Phoksundo an act of magic by the gods. Once you see it, you can only agree. This picture is not photoshopped – it is real. We visit it in late October when it is ice free on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #41 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

What would be an ideal place to escape from all the lunacy washing over our country – for a few days to a second home?

Let’s see… it would have to be a First World country with all the civilized amenities of modern life, and a cultured, educated, and welcoming people many, many of whom speak English.

A First World country that brushes aside all Woke nuttiness engulfing the US as silly rubbish to be ignored, and traditional Christian family values revered instead. That is not much farther away than a US cross-country flight. That has Goldilocks weather, not too hot, not too cold. That has sunsets in the ocean, fabulous food and wine, incredible castles in the sky, history that’s thousands of years old yet so hip and current it’s the cultural capital of its continent.

We’ve had Glimpses of this place before: The Europe That’s Still There, and The Portuguese Riviera. Yes, the Ideal Escape Hatch for us is Portugal – a quick overnight flight getting there, a morning flight return.

For 10 days in October of 2022, Rebel and I conducted a Portugal Exploration for TTPers. Rebel and I and your fellow TTPers will be doing it again in a few days from now. Just click on Portugal Exploration – May 3 -12, 2024 -- you owe it to yourself to be entranced by the photos, for a glimpse of this ideal place. (Glimpses of our Breathtaking World #157 ©photo Jack Wheeler)

This is not a Monet painting. It is a real photograph looking straight down upon the swirling clear blue water of the Syri i Kaltër – Blue Eye – Spring burbling up from a deep karst hole of the Bistricë River in the mountains of southern Albania.

The water surges up with such force that scuba divers trying to determine the spring’s depth could only get down to 50 meters (164ft) and no more, thus the depth of the underwater source is unknown. The water is cristal clear, drinkably pure, and very cold. Found between the World Heritage mountain town of Gjirokaster and the Adriatic beach resort town of Saranda, it’s a hypnotic, mesmerizing experience. The Blue Eye is the beauty of nature at its most entrancing. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #293, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Let’s flashback 2.2 million Fridays to 4,000 BC, six thousand years ago, when the original inhabitants of post-Ice Age Ireland erected this megalithic “dolmen” or portal tomb. It consists of three standing portal stones suspending a massive horizontal capstone, the limestone entrance to a tomb originally covered with an earthen mound.

Eventually the mound weathered away revealing the stone “skeleton” which was a sacred shrine for the Megalithic Irish all the way to the medieval Celts even though in a remote barren rocky region of far western Ireland found now in County Clare.

When it was finally excavated in 1986, the remains of 33 humans were found in the burial chamber below who lived between 3,800 and 3,200 BC. Thus it became known as “The Hole of Sorrows.”

When you come to gaze upon The Hole of Sorrows, you realize that this massive stone structure, one thousand four hundred years older than Egypt’s Great Pyramid, has stood here for all of recorded human history and beyond. All the kings and empires of all history have come and gone, while it still stands. It’s megalithic creators of millennia ago would be proud. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #219 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

You’re looking at something historically and scientifically astonishing. It is what remains of an astronomical observatory built 600 years ago – in 1420 – by a Sultan in Central Asia who loved science and mathematics more than war and conquest.

It was in Samarkand, the most fabled oasis of the Silk Road, that Sultan Ulugh Beg built his circular observatory, three stories high of white marble. All that’s left today is part of the underground sextant that you see in the photo.

For the full story of what he achieved, with many more photos, click on The Sultan Astronomer in TTP I wrote in 2020.

This Glimpse is to whet your appetite to learn about this amazing Sultan and his scientific achievements.

It’s also to whet your appetite for joining your fellow TTPers on our Heart of Central Asia expedition this September. The story of The Sultan Astronomer is but one example of what awaits you in exploring Central Asia, an enrichment of your life beyond description. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #212 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

I took this photo of Mount Rushmore looking straight on from a helicopter – so it may be from an angle you have not seen before. This coming election in November and on Veterans Day (11/11), it may be worthwhile to think of these four heroic Americans from a different perspective, to reflect on the almost unimaginable -- in the light of our comfortable lives we live today – challenges they faced and triumphed over to create and sustain our America.

It is worth asking what would they say to us today, what advice and counsel would they give us on how to face and triumph over what unimaginable – to them during their lives – challenges of ours as Americans today.

Look into their eyes. What are they saying to you? Election week and Veterans Day is a time of deep reflection on the meaning of being American. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #173 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The magnificent Sher-Dor Madrassa, built in the early 1600s, is part of the Registan public square complex of the ancient Silk Road oasis of Samarkand. What’s fascinating is the mosaic depiction of living beings on either side of the arch – a tiger and on its back a rising sun deity with a human face. This is honoring the pre-Islamic history of Samarkand that goes back almost 3,000 years.

It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC. For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity. Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.

Colonized by Czar Alexander II in the 1860s within the Russian Imperial Empire, and by the Soviets in the 1920s within the Uzbek SSR, Samarkand is flourishing today in independent Uzbekistan. There is so much to learn and contemplate upon when you are here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #67 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The island of Madeira in the Atlantic some 320 miles west of Morocco was first discovered, uninhabited, by Portuguese explorers in 1418. It has been a part of Portugal ever since. In the 1600s it became renowned for its Madeira wine, with English wine makers settling there and exporting it to England and the American colonies. The English consul Charles Murray built a beautiful estate, “Quinta do Prazer”, Pleasure Estate, high above the capital of Funchal, which by the late 1800s was converted into the Monte Palace hotel.

100 years later, Portuguese entrepreneurs developed the property into one of the most spectacular tropical gardens in the world, with lakes, waterfalls, and exotic tropical plants turning it into a fantasy wonderland. You can spend hours wandering around relaxing and luxuriating in this peaceful paradise. It’s just one of the magically beautiful places and truly relaxing, energizing experiences we have on Madeira and the Azores early this summer. Join your fellow TTPers on our Atlantic Paradises exploration to enjoy them – lots more photos in the link. Life goes by so quickly, Carpe diem! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #243 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the wooden Russian Orthodox Church in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. I was here years ago and now again today. It was built in the 1890s when Karakol was a garrison town in the furthermost reaches of the Russian Imperial Empire with China just on the other side of Tien Shan Mountains. In the atheist/communist Soviet Union it was used variously as a school, gymnasium, and warehouse, anything but a church.

After Kyrgyzstan gained its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was lovingly restored by the people of Karakol. All the various ethnicities comprising Karakol are welcome here – Christian Russians and Christian Kyrgyz, Uighur Moslem refugees escaping Chicom China, ethnic Han Chinese Moslems called Dungans escaping for the same reason, Buddhist and pagan Kazakhs. The interior is lavishly decorated with Christian art and paintings of Christian saints – no Islamic or Buddhist or any other religious art, just Christian. Yet all are welcome to pray in this haven of refuge and peace in their own way.

This is a Russian Church very distinct from those controlled by Moscow run by the Kremlin as a propaganda arm of the KGB/FSB. It is a real Russian Christian Church instead. Come here to feel to the spiritual serenity for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #221 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

There are not many places in Africa where you can do this, where a leopard mother has no fear of your getting this close to her cub. The best place in all Africa is a region of Zambia called South Luangwa, where iconic African wildlife is in vast profusion yet uninhabited by people. And where you can stay in a safari lodge so luxurious it’s hard to believe you’re way out deep in the African bush.

I’ve been traveling to Africa for 50 years now – since 1971 – and have been to every country on the continent, so I know how unique a South Luangwa safari is. If you have a dream of experiencing an African safari once in your life, you might consider here. I can hardly wait to come here again. Care to join me, to look into a baby leopard’s eyes yourself? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #117 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Next to the entrance of The Red House, the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago in the capital of Port of Spain, there is this marble inscription. It is clear that it is inspired by our 1776 Declaration of Independence and America’s founding principles. Trinidad’s population is 99% either Indian (from India), African, or a mix of the two. 64% are Christian, 21% Hindu, 6% Moslem, others undeclared – and all have these principles as a common bond between them.

Here in the Caribbean’s Trinidad is such a clear example of how America’s founding moral principles are such an inspiration to all humanity, of all cultures, creeds, and ethnicities. They are universal, America’s heritage as a gift to the world. This is the heritage of all Americans – something we need to hold on to and hold dear as we persevere during this current period of our country’s cultural, moral, and political lunacy. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #152, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The ramshackle Club Obama is a shed on stilts above a garbage dump of a beach in Conakry, the capital of the West African country of Guinea. It doesn’t get much business anymore because Obama is no longer popular here. Guineans thought he would flood them with US taxpayer dollars but he didn’t. “Obama did nothing for us,” they’ll tell you.

The sad truth is that Guineans have done nothing for themselves. Independence from France came in 1958, and the place has been run by one party dictatorships, military juntas, and ridiculously corrupt leaders ever since. It’s the size of Oregon, with 12 million people who have a per capita GDP of $800 a year. Yet is has up to half the world’s reserves of bauxite (source of aluminum) and is #3 in world production, has diamonds, gold, and many other resources – which all goes into the bottomless pockets of whoever the ruling elite are at the moment.

It’s the tragedy of so much of Africa writ large. In 1974, after Cassius Clay had his “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire with George Foreman, he was asked by a reporter upon his return to America, “Champ, what did you think of Africa?” With wit and wisdom he replied, “Thank God my Granddaddy got on that boat!” (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #84 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The 2,000 year-old Rose Red City of Petra was the religious center of an ancient Arab tribe named Nabataeans. They didn’t build huge temples such as this – they carved them out of cliffs of rose-red sandstone in their hidden mountain sanctuary east of the Dead Sea in present-day Jordan.

The most famous carved temple is called The Treasury (Al-Khazneh in Arabic), 128 feet high, hand-carved into the vertical rock face. You’ve seen it in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusades and other movies.

One interesting feature of Nabataean culture was the prominence of women. The two principal deities worshipped by them was the male god Dushara, god of the sun and sky whom the ancient Greeks associated with Zeus, and Al-Uzza, the goddess of fertility whom the Greeks associated with Aphrodite.

Al-Uzza was accompanied by Al-lat, the goddess of wisdom, and Manat, the goddess of destiny, as a triad devoutly worshipped by the Nabataeans and throughout all pre-Islamic Arabia. Together, they are the “forbidden goddesses” of Koranic Islam. Which is why their images, along with that of Dushara have been defaced and etched out of their carvings in the upper niches of The Treasury.

Experiencing Petra is on most people’s travel bucket list. Being here, it’s easy to see why. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #292, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the fortress town of Shatili in an extremely remote Caucasus region in Georgia called Khevsureti. It was built by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago. The Khevsur people who live here trace their ancestry back to these Crusaders and until the 1930s still wore chain mail in feud-battles with other towns. I took this picture in 1991.

American traveler Richard Halliburton (1900–1939) saw and recorded the customs of the Khevsurs in 1935. The Khevsur men, dressed in chain mail and armed with broadswords, wore garments full of decoration made up of crosses and icons. They don’t do that anymore, but they proudly retain their Crusader Christian heritage – for Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #85 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

900 years ago, the Church of Saint George (Bete Giyorgis in Amharic) was not built – it was hand carved downwards from a horizontal rock ledge. There is nothing like the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela anywhere else in the world.

Christianity was established in Ethiopia in 330 AD and has flourished ever since. Experiencing the devotion still so very much alive in one of the oldest Christian countries on earth is inspiring. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #26 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

When Marco Polo crossed the Tien Shan mountains and reached the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar in 1273, he faced an enormous desert of endless dunes called the Takla Makan, meaning “You go in, you don’t come out.”

To avoid this fate, the Silk Road at Kashgar splits in two – above to the north of the dreaded sand sea via the oases of Aksu and Turfan, and underneath to the south via the oases of Yarkand, Khotan, Charchan and Charklik. The two routes came together beyond Lop Nor, the eastern extension of the Takla Makan, at the oasis of Dunhuang.

His father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo had earlier taken the northern route to first meet Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, but now with Marco they took the southern route. They traveled in caravans of two-humped Bactrian camels, often crossing dunes on the edge – just like the photo you see. In 2008, I retraced Polo’s route along the southern route – part of it by motorized hang glider. He would be fascinated, I’m sure, to see what a camel caravan looks like from the air! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #13 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

No, this isn’t the Serengeti. The Etosha Pan is a huge 2,000 square mile salt pan in northern Namibia that has an amazing abundance of African wildlife that flourishes in a desert – lots of elephants as you see, giant eland, huge oryx, kudu with the males sporting their glorious spiral horns, wildebeest, zebra, all kinds of antelope, plus lions and leopards galore hunting them.

They all thrive on the available river and springs water amidst the surrounding mopane balsam woodlands. It’s one of Africa’s least known yet most astounding wildlife spectacles. Come during the dry winter months of July-September when the animals gather around the waterholes. You’ll never forget it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #291, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Yes, an ostrich. Ostriches are the world’s largest, heaviest, and fastest running birds on earth today. A full-grown adult male can weigh over 300 pounds, and it’s kick is so strong it can kill a lion. A pride of lions led by lionesses, or a coalition of adult males, can become skilled at taking down young ostriches, but they know to stay away from the adult big boys, for they are truly lethal. This fellow is still growing so he has to be careful on the plains of the Ngorongoro Crater Floor. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #290, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

July, 1984. The KPNLF – Khmer People’s National Liberation Front – was the Anti-Communist guerrilla movement fighting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese Communists in Cambodia. When I was first there in 1961, Cambodia was then a land of serenity, with a gentle and tranquil people who were at peace with themselves and the world. Now it was a land of indescribable Communist horror.

It was such a privilege to be with these brave men willing to wage war against that horror and bring freedom to their country. I told their tale in Turning Back the Terror, the February 1985 cover story for Reason magazine. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #20 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This astounding road is how you traverse the Dades Gorge on the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs in Morocco. Kasbahs are fortified villages of the Berbers, who have lived here since the end of the Ice Ages 12,000 years ago (related to the Lapps of the Scandinavian Arctic, both descending from Cro-Magnon hunters in Cantabria of northern Spain).

The road is rated as one of the most scenic drives in the world. It is in the High Atlas Mountains (once higher than the Himalayas and joined to the Appalachians in the northeast US before splitting apart to form the Atlantic Ocean 200 million years ago). Here you go from the sand dunes of the Sahara to the fabulous kasbahs of Skoura, Ouarzazate, and Ait Benhaddou. The drive is one of the many life-memorable experiences we have in our exploration of Moroccan Magic. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #110 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

In a hidden corner of Europe, the Radovna River pours off the Julian Alps to carve out the Vintgar Gorge with crystal clear water. A mile-long walkway with towering limestone cliffs on either side is your access.

Nearby is the gorgeous Lake Bled, with Bled Castle suspended atop a shoreline cliff. The medieval village of Piran, built on a spit of land projecting into the Adriatic Sea and encircled by a white sand beach is a short drive away. Ljubljana is one of Europe’s most utterly charming capital cities.

Most people have only heard of Slovenia as the birthplace of First Lady Melania Trump, but those who have been here understand it is one of the most entrancing countries on the European continent – pristine beauty, spotless environment, friendly and hospitable people, safe and very well-run. Whenever your next visit to Europe may be, try to include a few days or week or so here. You’ll never run out of fascinating things to do. A stroll through the Vintgar Gorge is an example out of so many. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #19 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The extraordinary rock-cut necropolis known as the Hypogeum (hi-po-gee-um) is the only prehistoric underground temple in the world. For over a thousand years (3500-2500 BC), the temple and burial complex (eventually housing 7,000 skeletons) was carved out and down – dozens of chambers, with rock-cut replicas of above-ground temples including simulated corbelled roofs. (A corbelled roof uses stone slabs that progressively overlap each other until the room is roofed over.)

The Megalthic Maltese learned to cut from the limestone bedrock with tools of stone and antler horn for they had no metal. These folks figured out all by themselves how to build extraordinary temples to their gods and goddesses close to six thousand years ago. Nobody taught them. They were the first. Only one reason Malta is one of our planet’s most fascinating places. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #109 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

In the early 1600s, some 150,000 Armenians fled persecution from the Ottoman Empire to settle in Isfahan, Persia under the protection of Shah Abbas.  There they created an extraordinary trading network that stretched from Amsterdam to Manila, becoming prosperous in the process.  This enabled them to build extraordinary Armenian Apostolic Church cathedrals – Armenian Christianity being one of the oldest Christian denominations originating in the 1st century AD.

Here you see the Armenian Apostolic Church in Isfahan, built in 1606 and dedicated to Saint Joseph of Arimathea,  the disciple who took Jesus’ body off the Cross. The Armenian Quarter of Isfahan remains populated by thousands of Armenian Christians today who may freely practice their faith, albeit strictly within the confines of their neighborhood and never beyond.  Nonetheless, it comes as a shock to see this in present-day Mullah Iran. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #262 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Lhasa, Tibet, 1986. Built in the mid-1600s, the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet was the home of the Dalai Lama as the incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist deity of compassion, until the Communist Chinese colonized Tibet in 1959.

The Potala is one of the world’s great architectural wonders, thirteen stories high with molten copper poured into the foundation to stabilize it from earthquakes, 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, 200,000 statues. I’ve been here several times since 1986, and it’s always such a powerful experience. Yet to Tibetans, this is a “dead” building as the Dalai Lama is gone. It is my hope that someday, the Dalai Lama will live here in a Free Tibet once again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #114 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

There is a paradise of islands of staggering beauty and idyllic weather year round, that’s a tax haven and the cost of living is low, that’s self-sufficient in food and everything grows in abundance, that’s so peaceful and serene crime is virtually unknown and there’s a total absence of wokeism.

What’s more, the people who live here love liberty so much they’ve had this motto emblazoned on their coat of arms for centuries:  Antes morrer livres que em paz sujeitos –  Rather die free than live in peaceful subjugation.

Oh, you can fly there non-stop from the east coast in a few hours for a few hundred bucks.

Where and what are we talking about?  The Azores of Portugal. They, along with the other Atlantic Portugal island of Madeira, are what Rebel and I call Atlantic Paradises.

Our exploration this June 28-July 8 of Atlantic Paradises is for anyone in normal health. We stay in great hotels, enjoy fabulous food and wine, and have a marvelous fun time. Click on the link to enjoy all the photos – and realize you can soon be there.

Don’t you deserve a break from all the woke lunacy washing over all of us now?  Escape with Rebel and me to our woke-free Atlantic Paradises.  It’s our escape hatch – it can be yours too!  Carpe diem – life is short – the time for a life-memorable adventure is now! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #289)

Humanity – Homo sapiens – began evolving from our Homo ergaster hominid ancestors in East Africa around a quarter-million years ago. In all that time since, only one group of us is directly descended from those first of us, still living in East Africa, practicing the original nomadic hunter-gather lifestyle of countless millennia, their DNA unrelated to any other people on earth, their language unrelated to any other.

They are the Hadza. It is with good reason anthropologists call them “the last of the first” – for there are less than a thousand of them left as cattle-herding and farming tribes continually encroach on the hunting grounds they need to survive.

The Hadza men hunt with bow and arrows, the Hadza women gather roots, tubers, fruits and berries. They have no villages. Living together in bands of 20-30, they encamp in small shelters of boughs and leaves wherever the men have killed an animal like an eland (their favorite), warthog or some baboons, make a fire (the ancient hand-twisted stick method) and feast on it until it’s time to move and hunt again.

They wear animal skins, supplemented with clothes they trade for with nearby tribes like the Datoga. They love to sing and dance around the campfire. They smile easily and laugh freely. The only metal I saw them have was Datoga-made arrowheads and knives traded for, and a couple of pots for cooking. It’s hard to imagine a more utterly basic and simple existence. Yet they live a far happier, purposeful, and satisfied life than a great, great many of our species elsewhere.

The Hadza live around Lake Eyasi on the floor of the Great Rift Valley at the base of the Serengeti Plateau in Tanzania. It’s in the deep South Serengeti where our Wheeler-Windsor Safaris are during the late Birthing Season of February-March before the Great Migration begins. You witness the most extraordinary wildlife spectacle on earth. Can you imagine seeing 200-300,000 wildebeest stretching across the Serengeti as far as the eye can see?

No picture does that justice, so you focus on the individual, like this mommy cheetah watching her cub’s reflection in a small pool.

Here is where humankind began amidst this primordial scene. And the Hadza have been here since that very beginning. It is such a privilege and honor to be with and learn from them. It is having life-memorable experiences like this that we aspire to give those who go on safari us. Let me know if you’d like to meet “the last of the first" on our Wheeler-Windsor Serengeti Birthing Safari in 2025. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #288, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Charlatans like Erich von Daniken convinced many gullible readers of his books this “monster” was of an alien in a space suit. Real archaeologists know it’s of an ancient tribal shaman, to be found among the greatest profusion of prehistoric rock art on earth over 10,000 years old in a remote plateau of the Algerian Sahara called the Tassili n’Ajjer.

There are no roads – you must climb up here with pack mules carrying your supplies. No one lives up here, it’s uninhabited. You’ll be among spectacularly gigantic rock formations with over 300 huge natural rock arches, so geologically unique it seems unworldly. In the center of Tassili n’Ajjer known as the Tadrart is a vastly deep gorge, like a knife sliced open the mountain. Clamber down to the bottom and you will discover a forest of 2,000 year-old Saharan cypress trees – yes, a forest in the Sahara, remnants of when the Sahara was green millennia ago.

My son Jackson and I explored here in 2003. Perhaps it’s time to be here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #28 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

It would be hard to find a more exotic restaurant than The Rock, perched on a coral outcropping off Michanwi Pingwe beach on the east coast of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. Start off with what I found to be the world’s best (and largest) piña colada, then tuck in to marvelous fresh caught grilled lobster along with an excellent French chardonnay. Finish with coconut tiramisù and a large cup of great Tanzanian coffee. Rebel and I will always fondly remember our experience here – and so will you should you ever visit the extraordinary island of Zanzibar. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #287, photo ©Jack Wheeler)