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)

Many consider this the most surrealistic place on earth. The clarity of the air turns the sky deep cobalt blue, the dunes are so old they’ve rusted red, combining with the white clay floor to give the skeletal trees a scene out of a Dali painting or a science fiction movie. But it’s real.

A thousand years ago the river watering these trees dried up, leaving a white clay pan amidst red sand dunes almost as tall as the Empire State Building. It’s so dry here these acacia trees can’t decompose, their skeletons standing scorched in the sun for ten centuries.

Dead Vlei is in a region of enormous dunes called Sossusvlei. It’s a mind-boggling experience to float over Sossusvlei in a hot air balloon. Namibia, in fact, is full of such experiences – the largest fur seal colony anywhere at Cape Cross, the marvelous abundance of African wildlife at the Etosha Pan, the dramatic shipwrecks dotting the Skeleton Coast, traditional people living untouched by the modern world like the Himbas.

Plus it’s one of the safest and best-run countries in all Africa – certainly worth consideration for your bucket list. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #47 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Curonian Spit is a 60 mile-long and skinny stretch of sand separating the 625 square-mile Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. It is jointly shared by Lithuania and Kaliningrad. The trees of one section of the pine forests covering the spit are weirdly twisted and distorted by some unknown force of nature. Their bizarre undulations have earned it the sobriquet, “The Dancing Forest.” It’s one of the as-yet unexplained mysteries of life on our planet, and a wondrous one to see. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #200 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

June 15, 1961. It was quite a shock to me when I was the surprise guest on Ralph Edwards’ famous television show. My “Life” at age 17? How could that be? The show’s producers were intrigued by a recent Life Magazine story of my swimming the Hellespont as did Leander in Greek mythology (December 12, 1960 issue) that also had photos of me on top of the Matterhorn and with a Jivaro headhunter.

Without my knowing, they flew my guide for the Hellespont swim, Huseyin Uluarslan, from Turkey to LA, the same for my guide on the Matterhorn, Alfons Franzen, from Switzerland, to be on the show. Most amazing of all, they got the Chief Prefect of Police for Ecuador, Jaime Duran, to pick up Tangamashi (the Jivaro who adopted me) and his brother Naita by helicopter from their Amazon encampment, then fly them from Quito to LA.

I was dumbfounded. So there we are in the photo, left to right: Ralph Edwards, Jaime Duran, Tangamashi, Naita, a very young yours truly, and Ralph Ferguson, son of medical researcher Dr. Wilburn Ferguson who translated for Tangamashi. Quite a moment for a 17 year-old boy – and no doubt for Tangamashi! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #10)

The School of Athens by Raphael (1483-1520) is one of the greatest artistic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here you see the two principal figures, Plato on the left and Aristotle on the right. It is a classic example of the picture worth a thousand words.

Plato is pointing to the heavens and his imaginary world of Forms that didn’t actually exist, while Aristotle has his outstretched hand towards the earth – cautioning Plato to pay attention to Reality. For only in the real world can Plato’s ideals of Truth, Justice, and Virtue actually exist, expressed in concrete human action.

Raphael’s masterpiece was commissioned by Pope Julius II for a room in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican – just as Julius commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Apostolic Palace’s Sistine Chapel at the same time! Raphael from 1509-1511, Michelangelo from 1508-1512.

While the Apostolic Palace is the official residence of the Pope, the part of it containing these masterpieces can be open to the public. It is one thing to see a photo of them, and quite another to contemplate them in person. Only then can you be appropriately overwhelmed by the superhuman genius it took to create them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #257 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Jamestown on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic is two blocks wide and a mile long in a narrow deep ravine. One of the world’s longest straight staircases, Jacob’s Ladder, was an original way to get out – 699 steps each 11 inches high – and it’s a workout.

People who live here call themselves “Saints” and pronounce their island “sent-uhl-LEEN-ah.” It’s famous of course for where the Brits exiled Napoleon after Waterloo. His residence and gardens on a high promontory, Longwood House, is preserved with original furnishings and his death bed. Dying in 1821, he was buried in a beautiful peaceful glen nearby (in 1840 he was reinterred at Les Invalides in Paris).

After climbing the Ladder and visiting Longwood, you’d want to refresh yourself at one of Jamestown’s pubs, where local Saints will be happy to hoist a pint with you. And don’t pass up a visit to the Saint Helena Distillery, the world’s remotest distillery, to learn how Head Distiller Paul Hickling makes his memorable Prickly Pear Whiskey, White Lion Spiced Rum, and Jamestown Gin – all in unique stepping stone bottles in honor of Jacob’s Ladder. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #46 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)