Santo Antão island, Cape Verde. The world’s best moonshine, which the islanders call grogue, is made here.  There are ten islands comprising the country of Cape Verde, some 400 miles off the West African coast of Senegal in the Atlantic Ocean.  For hundreds of years, Cape Verdeans have been making grogue but the folks like the fellow here on Santo Antão have perfected it.

You’ll find their stills out in the sugar cane fields, where they put the cane in to a press called a trapiche, then cook down the molasses in an old oil drum into a clear distilled rum that’s up to 140 proof or more. This fellow is pouring me a sample to taste in a coconut shell.  You have to be really careful because it’s so smooth and silky it goes down like water – making it very easy to get quickly wasted.

If you like it – which of course you will – he’ll pour fresh grogue into an empty plastic liter water bottle and sell it to you for six bucks.  People are always partying in Cape Verde, and why not with all this grogue.  They don’t mix it with anything except some lime juice and an ice cube.  Really fantastic.  Come to Cape Verde and have great time yourself! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #171 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Dar al-Hajar, the Rock Palace, was built by Yemen’s ruler, Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamiddin (1869-1948), atop a rock pinnacle as his summer residence. It lies in a valley about 10 miles outside Yemen’s capital of Sana’a. While an iconic example of Yemeni architecture, it’s impossible to visit now with civil war raging in the country. Someday we’ll be able to safely return to Yemen again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #143 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Toledo, Spain.   As you drive up the hill upon which this ancient city sits, at the city’s entrance you are greeted by this statue.  It is of King Alfonso VI of León and Castile (1040-1109) holding his sword as the Christian cross symbolizing his liberating Toledo from Moslem rule.

The sword has been the symbol of Toledo for over two millennia.  In 193 BC, Romans founded the city as Toletum, where their  blacksmiths developed a process of making swords of layered steel with different carbon contents, known to history as “Toledo steel,” the finest in the world for millennia until the hi-tech methods of today.

With Fall of Rome, Christian Visigoths ruled Spain from their capital here at Toledo – known as “Holy Toledo,” the center of a flourishing Christian civilization for 300 years until it was overrun by Moslems spreading Islam from Africa in the early 700s.

It was Alfonso VI who liberated Toledo from the Moslems in 1085.  It was his great-grandson, Alfonso VIII (1155-1214) who led 30,000 knights in a surprise attack on 200,000 Moslems at the Plains of Tolosa in 1212 to destroy Moslem rule in Spain.

Today, Toledo is a small town of some 50,000, charming, historic, and peaceful.  It’s one of the special places we’ll visit exploring Holy Spain this coming March. Hope you’ll be with us. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #170 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Khasab, Musendam, Enclave of Oman, October 2006. The sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil.

I came here to see the Persian smugglers. Go down to the wharves in Khasab and you will see them piled high with waterproof-wrapped bales of clothes, cases of soft drinks and juice, cartons of children's toys and electronic goods, an entire shopping mall of stuff, all ready to be crammed and tied down into 20 ft. long open speedboats with powerful outboard motors capable of outrunning Iranian Navy patrols.

There are dozens, scores, of waiting speedboats. The run from Khasab harbor to coves on the Iranian coast or the Iranian island of Qeshm takes about three hours. An average night will see dozens of speedboats racing across the Strait of Hormuz smuggling goods into Iran. The smugglers couldn’t have been more friendly to me. They hate the mullahs and are proud they are helping poor people in Iran. I had a great time with them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #169 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Baihanluo Catholic Church is the remotest Christian Church on earth. The isolated village is in a roadless region high on a Himalayan mountain ridge deep in “The Great River Trenches of Asia” – one of our planet’s most dramatic geological features where four major rivers – the Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze all spill off the Tibetan Plateau coursing south in tight parallel for 100 miles.

In the late 1800’s, French Catholic missionaries made their way far, far up the Mekong from the French colony of Laos to befriend the Nu and Lisu tribespeople up here. They responded by building this beautiful wooden church that has been lovingly cared for by the local parishioners ever since.

I led an expedition traversing all three of the great trenches twenty years ago (2001). We were welcomed so warmly by the devout villagers. It’s hard to get more remote than this, yet they have retained their faith for at least four generations now. You can imagine how powerful and experience it was to be with them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #138 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)

Now on display in National Museum of Egypt in Cairo, the 3,340 year-old artistic masterpiece of Pharoah Tutankhamun and his wife Ankhesenamun portrayed on facing back of the king’s throne chair was discovered by archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922.

I was stunned beyond words when I first saw it in 1971, and every time I’ve seen it since, I’m shocked into the same state of awe.  It’s not simply the sheer beauty of the blue lapis lazuli, the red carnelian, the silver and the solid gold plate, nor the breathtaking skill of artistry.  It’s that the scene is so profoundly, so touchingly human.  As she gently rubs oil on to his arms, they are looking into each other’s eyes with the tenderness of love.

This is not some God-King high and mighty ruler and haughty Queen far above their lowly subjects, but a very human man and wife in love.  This golden throne speaks to us from 33 centuries ago that back then people were people like us.  Our connection to history is our common humanity.  I hope someday you will be able to see the Golden Throne of King Tut in Cairo, and be in awe of it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #168 photo ©Jack Wheeler)