Equivalent to the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific are the Azores in the European Atlantic. You’re looking at Lagoa das Sete Cidades (Lagoon of the Seven Cities), an example of the Azores’ astounding beauty. As Hawaii is a part of the US, the Azores are a part of Portugal – since the 1430s first discovered uninhabited.

Everything grows here, cedar forest to giant tropical tree ferns, fruit from citrus to tropical, plants from corn to taro. Flowers are riotously everywhere. The sea swarms with fish being on the main Atlantic migration route for whales and dolphins. The islands are immaculately cared for by Azoreans, no pollution, air sparkling clear, weather in the 60s in winter, 70s in summer, so peaceful they are virtually crime-free.

Azoreans love drinking parties, cheerful festivals, and bright colors – with their charming homes painted the color of key lime pie, raspberry mousse, or oceanic blue. They 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.”

This is one of our planet’s truly magical places. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #11 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

It is a profoundly somber experience to stand here on this abandoned weed-strewn airstrip. For this is Runway Able on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas, where 75 years ago today, on August 6, 1945, a B-29 nicknamed Enola Gay piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets took off with Little Boy in its bomb bay bound for Hiroshima – and three days later on August 9, a B-29 nicknamed Bockscar piloted by Maj. Charles Sweeney flew off with Fat Boy in its bomb bay headed for Nagasaki.

This lost bit of tarmac is the most consequential airstrip on earth. Be prepared for a deep complex of swirling emotions if you ever stand here yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #14 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)

Near the town of Ubud on Indonesia’s paradise island of Bali there is a Hindu sanctuary of spectacularly luxuriant rain forest providing a haven for over 1,000 Balinese long-tailed monkeys. Here’s one communing with a group of moss-covered monkey statues that dot the sanctuary.

This is a sacred place for the Balinese people, as it contains three temples over 600 years old, and is devoted to the Hindu principle of Tri Hata Karana – “three ways to reach spiritual and physical well-being” -- harmony between people, harmony between people and nature, harmony between people and the Supreme God.

There is perhaps no place on earth in which to better experience the blissful harmony of Tri Hata Karana than Bali.  It is a marvelous privilege to be here and experience it for yourself.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #106 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

My first Everest expedition was in October, 1987. I took this photo climbing above the Rongbuk Monastery. The enormous North Face of Mount Everest is entirely in Tibet.  The summit at 8,848 meters/29,029 feet is in the jet stream with the plume flowing left along the Northeast Ridge, the climbing route of Mallory and Irvine in 1924.

On the back side of the ridge is the Kangshung Face, also in Tibet.  On the right side is the West Ridge, the border between Tibet and Nepal.  At the right time of year, the setting sun turns the whole North Face bright pink.  At any time of year on a clear day like this, you are witnessing one of the most magnificent sights our planet has to offer. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #105 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This Xikrin-Kayapo tribesman and his people live in the deepest heart of the Brazilian Amazon on tributaries of the Xingu River. You wonder what he would think of us as panic, fear, and madness engulfs our civilization. Having spent time in his village not long ago, I’m confident he would simply shake his head in bewilderment and say, “Please just let us live our lives in our forest, that’s all we want.”

True indigenous tribes who keep to their traditional way of life are so rare now in the Amazon or anywhere else where they once flourished. Each one is a precious living cultural heritage of humanity. It is such a privilege when they share their way of life with you. They deserve to have their wish granted, as my tribesman friend would express it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #4 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

There are places in our world so staggeringly beautiful you have to see them to believe they exist. Yet those people walking along the foot bridge can’t see what you’re looking at. That has to be in the air, hovering from high above in a helicopter. We live in a world of such beauty it really does take your breath away. And best of all, the beauty of the Grand Prismatic Spring is right here in America. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #2 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

10,000 years ago, the Sahara was green, with lakes, rivers, and such an abundance of animals it was a hunting paradise for people who lived here. You’ll find their petroglyphs carved on to rock outcroppings like this that my son Jackson and I found on a Trans-Sahara Expedition in 2003.

The Milankovitch astronomical cycles that drive Earth’s climate produced a West African monsoon that greened the Sahara back then. When the cycles shifted ending the monsoon, the Sahara turned dry desert as it remains today. Political cycles that permitted a peaceful crossing of the world’s greatest desert have also shifted, making this too dangerous now.

A Trans-Sahara Expedition is one of the world’s great adventures. Hopefully, one will be possible again in the not-too-distant future. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #7 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

In a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean, off the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia lies one of the world’s great archaeological mysteries: the only ancient stone city built on a coral reef. No one knows who built it or how.

Micronesians say their ancestors called it Soun Nan-leng, The Reef of Heaven. Their name for it today is Nan Madol, the City of Ghosts.

On artificial islets connected by a series of canals are massive walls up to 25 feet high enclosing temples, tombs, ritual centers, and platforms for thatch homes – all made of giant columnar basalt stone. Eons ago, lava flows on Pohnpei cooled into vertical pillars. Over a thousand years ago, ancient Micronesians began hauling these basalt logs miles away to build this stone city. With an average weight of 5 tons, 10,000 pounds – and some up to 25 tons, 50,000 pounds each – how they did this remains unexplained. It lies deserted today, abandoned and lost for centuries.

Paddling a kayak through the canal maze of Nan Madol to clamber over these monumental stone complexes in solitary silence – for visitors are rarely here – leaves you in a state of unforgettable awe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #6 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April 22, 1990.  This is my son Brandon, age six, happily atop a small pressure ridge of sea-ice at 90 North Latitude, the geographic North Pole.  I started leading expeditions to 90N in 1978.  This was my 12th, and the best weather there we’d ever had.  A glorious day at the very top of our planet, and a glorious memory for both father and son.

If fortune favors you with the opportunity, have grand adventures with your children or grandchildren when they are young. They will treasure the memories so much they will someday tell their grandchildren about them.  Life is short, carpe diem. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #104 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

We’re now well over 100 Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World since we instituted this daily feature on TTP last July. So to refresh your memory of them, we’ll be sprinkling a recycle of them from now on in the series.

Our very first was Surrealistic Art in Nature, which you’ll find unsurpassed in Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon near Page, Arizona.  No artist could paint something more surrealistic than what nature has created here.  It’s a photographer’s fantasy land – enhanced by a Navajo Indian guide who knows all the best lighting and perspectives.

You can explore the world to experience the greatest wonders of nature, but they are also to be found here in the American West. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #1 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

On the remote north side of the island of Malekula in Vanuatu, there lives a cannibal tribe called the Big Nambas.  The men wear a penis gourd wrapped in pandamus fibers, and eat “man long pig,” cooked human enemies.  You have to trek over mountains of thick jungle to reach them.  When I was able to years ago, there were a few men who continued the practice.  This gentleman is one of them.  I was in no danger as they were very kind and gracious to me.

That wasn’t the case a century ago when the first explorers, Martin & Osa Johnson, reached them.  Their 1918 film, “Cannibals of the South Seas,” made the Johnsons famous, and you can see it on YouTube.  Today they are far more benign. It is an extraordinary experience to meet a culture of fearsome reputation and realize they are people like you and me. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #103 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The world’s most spectacular nature park is the 130-acre Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.  In the gigantic greenhouse of the Flower Dome, virtually every rare flower on earth flourishes in abundance, while the Cloud Forest is a wonderland of tropical waterfalls seemingly falling out of the sky high above.

Dominating the park are the 160-foot high Supertrees, towering vertical gardens covered in orchids, ferns, vines, and exotic plants.  There are elevated canopies and walkways between them.  Exploring the astonishing display of hi-tech botanical artistry and genius that is Gardens by the Bay is absolutely awe-inspiring.

TTPer Cassowary was kind enough to guide me through the park as Singapore is his home.  Perhaps he’ll tell us more about it on the Forum.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #102 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the Rock of Aphrodite – where Greek mythology says the Goddess of Love was born fully formed from the sea-foam surging around it – and makes Cyprus the Island of Love.  It is south of Paphos on the island’s west coast.

Adjacent is the Temple Sanctuary of Aphrodite, where pilgrims came from every Greek city and kingdom for 2,000 years to worship her. The ancient Greeks prayed to Aphrodite more than any of their other gods, for she was the apotheosis of love, desire, and fertility or having children. Which explains why today couples travel from all over the world to get married here.

Folks have been living in Cyprus for a really long time.  So long that they were the first people in the world to domesticate cats over 9,000 years ago.  A Neolithic village has been unearthed called Choirokoitia that’s surprisingly sophisticated for being 8,000 years old.  In Roman times, after Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead, he went to Cyprus -- there is a beautiful church, the Agios Lazaros, built over his tomb.

The Painted Churches of Troodos are adorned with magnificent medieval art.  The ruins of a Crusaders’ fortress inspired the fairy tale castle of Walt Disney’s Snow White.  I hope Cyprus’ inspirational history will inspire you to explore it someday. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #101 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

July, 1973.  The Hellespont is the famous strait separating Europe from Asia, where the Black Sea after flowing through the Bosphorus at Istanbul and a widening called Marmara empties into the Aegean Sea of the Mediterranean.  One of the great stories of Greek Mythology is Leander swimming the Hellespont to tryst with Hero, the woman he loved but was forbidden to see.

Thus he swam at night, and she lit a torch for him to swim to.  One night a storm blew out the torch and the strong currents swept Leander onto the rocks to drown. So I first swam the Hellespont at night in 1960 and almost drowned myself (LIFE Magazine, Dec. 12, 1960, pp 91-94).

This was the second time, swimming from Leander’s village site of Abydos on the Asia side to Sestos, Hero’s village site on Europe’s.  Here I am having reached the Sestos shore.

The Hellespont is where the Trojan War was fought, where the Persians crossed to lose against the Greeks at Marathon and Salamis, where Alexander crossed to conquer the Persian Empire.  Lord Byron swam the Hellespont in 1803 to make all the legends and history a part of his life.  I was determined to do the same, twice to make sure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #100 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Our last Glimpse (#98) was the back panel of the Painted Monastery of Voronet. Here you see a side panel fresco of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Startlingly, however, the couple is not eating an apple at the serpent’s behest but a hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom – recognizable as the classic Disney cartoon mushroom with the red cap and white spots. Sounds hard to believe but there it is, 532 years old.  It’s the center panel of a triptych, the left panel has Adam and Eve each grasping an Amanita stalk, the right panel knowing they are naked covering themselves with fig leaves.

In all three panels, the Garden of Eden is an Amanita garden.  This is devotional art by deeply devout Christians over 500 years ago.  What’s going on?   Amanita muscaria is commonly found in the Carpathian forests to this day.  Did the Voronet painters engage in Amanita ceremonies giving them visions they used to paint their churches?  Did those visions make them decide it was Amanita and not an apple that Eve ate?

From time immemorial, people have used hallucinogenic plants to commune with the spirit world.  Researchers have shown that Soma, the god instantiated on earth in the earliest Hindu texts, is Amanita muscaria.  And they’ve made another connection.  Google Amanita muscaria + Santa Claus to find out. Better be sitting down. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #99 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Painted Monastery of Voronet was built by Romania’s national hero Stefan the Great in 1488.  A UN World Heritage Site, Voronet lies in a remote Carpathian mountain valley in the northeast corner of Romania.  The entire church is covered in brilliantly painted scenes of Christian reverence.

The frescoes, with the famous “Voronet blue” made of crushed lapis lazuli, have withstood over 500 winters of wind, snow, and rain.  The extraordinary back panel of the Last Judgment is renowned as the East’s Sistine Chapel (as in Eastern or Orthodox Christianity).  It’s one of Romania’s many wonders. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #98 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The small black mountain in front of you is a volcano called Tavurvur on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In 1994, Tavurvur erupted, covering New Britain’s beautiful capital Rabaul in ash.  The entire area is volcanic, including the hot springs where I’m standing to take this picture.  Tavurvur is very much alive and smoking today – starkly beautiful and dangerous.

History can be like this – beautiful and peaceful, then without warning it explodes in violent destruction.  The lesson then is how to overcome, rebuild, and avert its repetition.

It’s an obvious lesson to learn right now, with the destruction of our economy by the Chinese Communists unleashing their virus, and the current attempted theft of the presidency and our entire electoral system by the Democrats.  We must overcome these twin evils, and we must make extremely sure that we never allow such travesties to threaten our country ever again.

You can climb to the rocky rim of Tavurvur to stare down into its smoking caldera.  There’s fabulous scuba-diving along the coral reefs offshore of Rabaul, and upon sunken Japanese battleships from World War II.  It’s a worthwhile experience to come here as you learn the Lesson of Rabaul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #97 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Antarctic island of South Georgia is home to a million King penguins, plus countless fur seals, gigantic elephant seals, staggering numbers of seabirds such as albatrosses, amidst a backdrop of towering mountains with massive glaciers spilling off them.

Nothing can prepare you for the incomprehensible size of the penguin rookeries here, densely packed as far as the eye can see (all those white dots on the hills behind are penguins).  Nor for the size of bull elephant seals weighing up to 8,000 pounds, especially when they rise up and crash their chests against each other in mating challenges emitting deafening bellows.  Nor being surrounded by a thousand fur seals unafraid of you.  The density of wildlife combined with the magnificent beauty of the island is completely overwhelming.

Here also is the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken where the heroic explorer Ernest Shackleton is buried.  You can only get here by expedition cruise ship.  South Georgia is one of the great experiences on our planet. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #96 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April, 2003.  On my 21st expedition to 90 North, the geographic North Pole, I took my son Jackson. He was nine, but handled it like a trooper. And no wonder – it was his third time!  The first was when he was just six, following his brother Brandon whom I had taken to the Pole back in 1990.

We landed our ski-equipped Twin Otter on the sea ice – and as it’s featureless with the ice slowly moving on the Arctic Ocean surface, nothing stays there for long.  So if you want a physical candy-stripe North Pole, you have to bring your own!  It is so indescribable to actually be on the very top of our planet that it has to be experienced to be understood.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #95 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is my wife Rebel relaxing with a native of Antarctica while on a visit to the Palmer Science Station there.  Getting up close and personal with Antarctic wildlife is so easy as they have no fear of us at all, be they seals, elephant seals, or penguins.

Better not get too close to male elephant seals in domination combat, however, as they can weigh up to 7,000 pounds.  And steer clear of full grown leopard seals, which are apex predators weighing over 1,000 pounds.  No worries, though, for Rebel with this young fellow.  Experiencing Antarctica is always a memorable adventure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #94 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

You know the adage about the “800-pound gorilla” going wherever he wants to – such as five feet from you in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda.  It is one of the world’s great thrills to be this close to these giants and feel at ease doing so.  They are “habituated” to small groups of people whom they ignore.  You of course are very quiet and do nothing to alarm them, just observing the little ones playing, mothers nursing, young ones climbing trees, huge male silverbacks watching over their families.

Gorillas are vegetarians, males eating up to 75 pounds of vegetation a day – thus they spend most of their waking hours chewing!  The biggest silverbacks never get anywhere near 800 pounds by the way – 450 to 500 pounds at most (like the fellow in the photo).  Big enough, believe me.

Rwanda is one of the best-run countries in all Africa.  President Paul Kagame deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for healing his nation after the genocidal horrors of the 1990s.  That’s far in the past now in this beautiful, peaceful land.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #93 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

And his father too.  I started taking my son Brandon on expeditions with me at age five.  Here we are in the Serengeti during the Great Migration.  He saw three lion kills happen yards away, a baby born in a Masai hut – he’s never forgotten his first great adventure to this day, over 30 years later.

I encourage you in every way to take your children, grandchildren, nephews or nieces on an exploration of one of our planet’s many wondrous places when they are young.  It will be formational for them, a founding experience of awe for what a magically extraordinary world they are privileged to live in.  And your seeing it through their eyes will be a shot of youth elixir in your veins.  It will be a life-memorable bonding experience for you both. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #92 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Photo taken at an altitude of 22,000 feet (6,700 meters) in a AS 350 B3 ultra-high altitude Eurocopter on our Himalaya Helicopter Expedition.  We are looking into the Western Cwm (valley), West Shoulder of Everest in the left forefront, entire Southwest Face of Everest summit (29,029 ft-8,848m) to base on the left, Lhotse (4th highest on earth at 27,949ft-8,516m) straight ahead, the flank of Nuptse on the right.

The climbing route is from Base Camp to Camp I past the top of the Khumbu Ice Fall (bottom of photo), up the Cwm to Camp II at the foot of the Lhotse wall, scale via fixed ropes to Camp III perched on the wall, then up to the notch between Everest and Lhotse (on the horizon in the photo) that is the South Col and Camp IV.  The summit is reached from there via the Southeast Ridge on the other side of the photo.

We’ll be here again in late April-early May next year.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #91 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

June 2002, the Vulture’s Mouth Glacier. In the deepest heart of the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, south of the Flaming Cliffs where Roy Chapman Andrews discovered dinosaur eggs in the 1920s, there is a naked spine of mountains called the Gurvan Saihan. In the Gurvan Saihan there is a deep gorge called Yol Alyn, the Vulture’s Mouth. And in the Vulture’s Mouth, there is a glacier.

It is not a big glacier, the continual ice buildup of a stream that never melts even in the heat of the Gobi summer. Yet it is a glacier nonetheless, thick enough for my son Jackson and I to walk on for more than a mile.  The Vulture’s Mouth Glacier is just one of a multitude of extraordinary experiences Mongolia has to offer the explorer. Are you up for exploring it with me next summer of 2021? (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #90 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

At the Temple of the Peacock Angel in the Yezidi holy city of Lalish, you find this entrance to a Sacred Spring with a carved black snake, revered by Yezidis as they believe a black snake stuck itself into a hole in Noah’s Ark and saved humanity.

The Yezidis are among the most ancient of all peoples in the Middle East.  Their heartland is in what is now Northern Iraq, or Iraqi Kurdistan.  You may know of them through the horrific butchery perpetrated upon them by the medieval terrorists of ISIS which gained worldwide notoriety.

They are a fascinating people whose syncretic beliefs are a mélange of Zoroastrianism, Syriac Christianity, Sufi Islam spiced with their own interpretation of all three.  In other words, they are their own people, no one else like them – peaceful, at ease with themselves, and immensely likeable.

Their protectors are the Kurds – an extraordinary people in their own right.  We’ll be visiting Iraqi Kurdistan and the Yezidis once more next year. ((Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #89 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The spectacle takes place in the fall at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang.  I attended in 2010 and 2012.  It has to be seen to be believed.  You’re looking at 10,000 dancers, acrobats and performers on the stadium floor.  The background screen of a rising sun and Korean letters is a “card stunt,” 30,000 students holding colored cards composing it.

The number “65” is for the 65th anniversary of the surrender of Imperial Japan in World War II (August 15, 1945 – I took this photo in 2010), their Liberation Day (our V-J Day).  The snowy mountain depicted below the 65 is Mount Paekdu, where all North Koreans are taught their country’s founder Kim Il-sung defeated the Japanese and won the war (he was actually at a Soviet army camp near Khabarovsk, Siberia at the time).  They are never taught a word about the events a few days prior to their Liberation Day, nor to whom the Japanese surrendered.  Hands down, NorkLand is the world’s most bizarre country. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #88 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

A cliff-top fishing village on the Italian Riviera?  Nope, Azenhas (ah-zhane-yas) do Mar – Watermills of the Sea – is on the Portuguese Riviera.  This is a magic place of fairy tale castles, thousand year-old fortresses, luxury boutique hotels, fabulous food, great wine, gorgeous beaches, and postcard-perfect scenery everywhere.

The Portuguese people are among the kindest in Europe, while Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world.  Of all the planet’s First World countries, it’s hard to find one more calm and serene than here.

If you’d like a personal experience of the best of Portugal, Wheeler Expeditions can arrange it for you.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #87 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is one of the magical places we experience on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions.  An independent kingdom for 650 years in the remote Mustang region of Nepal, it is one of the last places of traditional Tibetan culture on earth, unchanged for centuries.  There are sky-caves here – apartment complexes carved out of vertical cliffs 2,000 years ago – Drok-pa nomads in the high pastures, spectacular sacred ceremonies, all in a mysteriously beautiful setting where the Himalayas meet the Tibetan Plateau.  We’ll be here again next April. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #86 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)