The Akodessawa Fetish Market in Lomé, Togo has to be seen to be believed. Here on display is a vast array of animal parts -- heads, skulls, bones, horns, skins et al – for sale to the adherents of Togo’s official religion of Voodoo. They are used to communicate with and pray to the huge variety of spirits and deities they believe in.

What you see here is a very small fraction of the market – there are thousands of animal parts here from entire elephant skulls to small mummified rodents. Behind the displays are stalls where voodoo priests cater to devotees for healing potions or being an interlocutor to the spirits. This is not sticking pins in dolls of enemies. The people of Togo and neighboring Benin believe deeply in their religion. Togo in West Africa is the size of New Jersey and has over 130 fetish markets in the country, with the largest here. This is an experience you never forget.

(Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #273 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April 1990. When our oldest son Brandon was six years old, I took him with me to the North Pole. It was my 14^th expedition there, and as always, we stopped to visit friends at Canada’s northernmost community, the Inuit hunting village of Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island. Brandon thought it would be cool to sleep in an igloo, which the Inuit do only when they’re hunting seals or walrus far out on the ice.

So the villagers happily complied, showing him how they built one, carving out blocks of wind-blown snow, shaping and placing them in an inward-sloped spiral with one block on top, and packing snow as mortar between the blocks. When it was bedtime – still daylight with 24-hour sunshine by April – they lined the inside with caribou skins, which shed like crazy with hairs everywhere but sure are warm. Snuggled into our arctic down sleeping bags, we slept like stones.

It was an experience both of us will never forget. Never pass up an opportunity to have an adventure with your kids they’ll always remember. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #50 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Jack Wheeler is Escape Artist’s World Exploration Expert. He is the founder of Wheeler Expeditions at WheelerExpeditions.com.

Banja Luka, Srpska.  You may never have of this country, the Republic of Srpska, that takes up half the size and 40% of the population of the Balkan country of Bosnia-Herzegovina.  The entire country was conquered and ruled for centuries by the Islamic Ottoman Empire, thus after the Ottomans fell in WWI and Yugoslavia broke apart after the Soviet Union fell, those Bosnians who retained adherence to Christianity through those centuries of Islamic occupation found themselves greatly outnumbered by those who had converted to Islam (“Bosniaks”).  So they (Bosnian Serbs) formed their own country which remains unrecognized by every other country on the planet.

They rebuilt their beautiful Cathedral of Christ the Savior – destroyed in WWII and never allowed rebuilding by Communist Yugoslavia – in their capital of Banja Luka.  You can see how gorgeous the interior is from the photo.  The whole country is beautiful with its lakes, forests, rivers, vineyards, sprinkled with old castles and charming villages. The people of Srpska are proud of what they have achieved and now simply want to live in peace with their neighbors.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #300, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Halfway between Samoa and Fiji in the South Pacific lies the French Territory of Wallis and Futuna.  It’s so hard to reach I had to charter a King Air private plane to get here in 2016.  The capital is Mata-Utu on Wallis Island which the native Polynesian islanders call Uvea.  French missionaries arrived at Uvea in 1837 to convert the islanders to Roman Catholic Christianity.  They were Marist Brothers, a branch of the Society of Mary. Today, 99% of the native islanders are Catholic.

The spiral church you see, Église du Sacré-Coeur (Church of the Sacred Heart) was built in the early 1900s out of hand-cut volcanic rocks .  The interior is spectacular, and if you look high up on the fourth tier you’ll see a figure in an opening.  That’s a statue of Jesus with arms outstretched in welcome to all who worship here.  The islanders consider themselves French citizens with representation in both the French Senate and National Assembly in Paris.  At the same time they consider themselves ruled by their own king – the King of Uvea (Wallis) and the King of Sigave (Futuna), which the French government recognizes.  This is a peaceful, friendly, interesting place.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #299, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Bukhara is the oldest city on the fabled Silk Road.  You’ve seen Glimpses of The Well of Job, where legend says Job of the Old Testament struck the ground with his staff, creating a well bubbling with fresh pure water that still flows today.

And of The Ark of Bukhara, the palace-fortress of Bukhara rulers since 500 BC.  The ancient Silk Road oasis has a history of 5,000 years.  I was first here in 1963, a 19 year-old teenager with a summer job of filming fabulously exotic places in Central Asia unknown to the West for a Hollywood stock film company.

I was not much older than these teenage ladies back then.  I took this picture of them when I was last in Bukhara in 2019.  It was so extraordinarily lucky of me to experience such magical places as Bukhara when young.  It’s enabled me to stay young at heart so many decades later.

If you remain young at heart, please consider joining me on my next exploration of Central Asia.  And perhaps you have a teenage child or grandchild with whom you could experience its wonders together.  It will be a life-long treasured memory for you both.  Carpe diem! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #214 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This close – if you’re at the right place at the right time in the right boat.  That would be the Canal do Faial channel between the islands of Faial and Pico in the Azores, populated by more spawning sperm whales that just about anywhere else.  It’s also a haven for many other whale and dolphin species on their migratory route between the North and South Atlantic.

This is one of the world’s best whale-watching sites each year in June—and we plan to be there again on our exploration of Atlantic Paradises next year.

You won’t believe how truly paradisical Madeira and the Azores are.  Not just the weather and the beauty, but how safe, calm, and serene they are, how friendly everyone is – so friendly because everyone here is at peace with themselves.  You’ll discover your inner peace here too.  While never being bored as there’s always something exciting to see and do.  Like being this close to a baby sperm whale.

You owe it to yourself to make these Atlantic Paradises a part of your life. (Glimpses of our breathtaking world #195).