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 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)

Belvoir Beach, Herm, Channel Islands. Could there be a more idyllic lunch—grilled lobster, fresh garden salad, chilled Chardonnay – here on Herm, the smallest of the five main Channel Islands. There’s Jersey, Guernsey, Sark, Alderney – and tiny Herm. Less than one square mile, but overflowing with charm and hospitality – from the Victorian White House Hotel to the Mermaid Pub to lobsters at Belvoir Beach. Coming here is a true escape from the worries of the world. At Herm they are a long ways away. Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #177 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Groups of animals have collective nouns, like a pride of lions or a school of fish.  A group of zebras is called a dazzle.  The term is excellently appropriate.  You may wonder why zebras have such clearly obvious stripes that any predator can see.  The reason is that predators like lions or hyenas always target a specific individual in the group that’s weak, young or vulnerable.  To be dazzled is to be confused or bewildered, and that’s just what zebra stripes do to attacking predators.  As the zebras merge on the run, it’s far more difficult for the predator keep focused on the selected target – so the zebras escape unscathed far more often than not.  Their stripes are a marvel of evolutionary survival.  This photo was taken on the plains of the Serengeti. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #285, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

St. Finnbarr’s Oratory, Gougane Barra, County Cork. St. Finnbarr (550-623) is the patron saint of the city of Cork, now Ireland’s second largest city, on the south coast of the Emerald Isle. He established this tiny church in the late 500s, and has been built and rebuilt on a small island on Lake Gougane, with the one you see finished some 150 years ago.

Gougane Barra is a remote valley distant from Cork, almost uninhabited, of legendary beauty. The oratory or chapel has been a holy place of summer pilgrimage for Christians for fifteen centuries, revered for its complete serenity and peacefulness. Rarely visited outside of summer due to its remoteness, you may have this holy place all to yourself. Here is where you come to rest and reinvigorate your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #218 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 (4^th 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. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #91 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)