FIVE FEET AWAY FROM AN 800-POUND GORILLA
©2019 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)
MEMORIES OF 2024
Rebel and I decided to start making our memories of 2024 early, by spending the first half of January in a place we’d never been to before: The Canary Islands (thus the Island of Lancelot Glimpse you saw on Monday, 1/22). Here we are at a viewpoint on Gran Canaria. The Canaries turned out to be absolutely fascinating, establishing friendships with extraordinary people.
Where might you go and what might you experience to have lifetime memories of your own in 2024?
How about exploring some awesomely cool place in the world with me to accomplish that?
How’s that, Jack? you may be asking. Didn’t you say that, with your turning 80 in 2023, you’d be retiring from running expeditions this year? Well, yes, I did say that a year ago, but Rebel and I had such a marvelous time taking TTPers to special places around the world all year that I just can’t all a halt to that simply because of an arbitrary age.
Besides, I’ve never been age-appropriate anyway, like being adopted into a family of Amazon headhunters at 16 and hunting a man-eating tiger at 17. So with my health good (I work out pretty hard six days a week), why not keep doing what I love?
What follows is what explorations Rebel and I have planned for the first half of 2024. I designed them for anyone in normal good health and no special skills required. Please consider this as a personal invitation for you, a fellow TTPer, to join me for an experience you’ll treasure for the rest of your life.
As you consider, I can guarantee one thing – that you’ll really enjoy all the photos in each of the links. Then you can picture yourself making these special places a part of your life. Let’s go memory-creating for 2024!
THE HERO STATE OF TEXAS
TEXAS: Understood. We will now be installing more border razor wire than ever.
Less than a day after the Supreme Court ruled that federal Border Patrol agents had the legal authority to cut through state-installed razor wire along the border, Texas National Guard soldiers were in Eagle Pass installing more razor wire as the fallout between state and federal governments escalated.
“National Guard soldiers laid out more fencing and concertina wire despite the rain that swept through the region Tuesday, according to video. Texas National Guard soldiers are setting up more razor wire here in Eagle Pass to repel illegal crossings.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court allowed the Biden administration to remove this wire but Texas is still blocking Border Patrol from processing migrants in this area. pic.twitter.com/edptUKNobz
— Camilo Montoya-Galvez (@camiloreports) January 23, 2024”
THE LOST CITY OF DJADO
In the remotest center of the Sahara Desert lies an unknown, unexcavated mysterious lost city known as Djado. No one knows who built it or when. Lying on the ancient Roman trade route from the Saharan salt mines of Fachi and Bilma to the Mediterranean, the Djado oasis flourished for a thousand years (the 1st Millennium AD), but has been forgotten and abandoned for many centuries.
The only people who live near Djado in the vast desert wasteland where Algeria, Libya, Chad, and Niger come together, are the wandering Toubu nomads with no permanent settlements. It is an indescribable experience to explore such a wondrous lost city right out of an Indiana Jones movie that you have all to yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #17, photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE GLOBAL WOKERATI ARE TREMBLING BECAUSE TRUMP IS JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS
With the shriek of elderly beldames leaping on the piano stool after spying a mouse in their petticoats, the Western liberal intelligentsia has finally spotted the likely result of this November’s U.S. presidential elections.
In the editorial conferences of fine old U.S. and UK publications, the leader writers are having hysterics. In the cocktail parties of Davos, I am told, the global wokerati have been trembling so violently that you could hear the ice tinkling in their negronis.
Instead of hyperventilating and clutching our pearls, we need to look dispassionately at what happened in his last presidency as a guide to the future. My thoughts, of course, go first to Ukraine.
It is the paramount struggle of our time, and we are still not doing enough to help that heroic nation. In the past two years Ukrainians have been laying down their lives, and bearing unimaginable hardship, in the cause of freedom — not just their own freedom, but the principles of freedom and democracy around the world.
Here’s why I believe Trump will help the Ukrainians win.
DO BASHKIR PROTESTS PORTEND THE BREAKUP OF RUSSIA?
[TTP has been predicting developments like this since the onset of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago. I have known Paul Goble since the 80s when we worked together on implementing the Reagan Doctrine. He is one of the world’s preeminent experts on the inner workings of Russia. See his Tatarstan Capitalizes On China’s Expanding Role In Middle Volga, TTP, Sept 27, 2023. --JW]
What’s happening now:
Mass protests in Bashkortostan featured calls for the independence of the Middle Volga republic and have shattered the image that Russia is united behind Putin.
These events have convinced Bashkirs and other non-Russians that their time is coming, and Kyiv believes that the non-Russian peoples will act soon enough to affect the course of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
The demonstrations have sparked fears in the Kremlin and prompted some Russian nationalists to arm themselves to put down any non-Russian actions.
Here are the details.
THE ISLAND OF LANCELOT
Lanzarote, Canary Islands. How, you may ask, did the most famous knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, Sir Lancelot du Lac, end up in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco? Well, he didn’t. It was an Italian explorer named after him, Lancelotto Malocello, who became the first European to reach this island in 1336, where he lived for 20 years.
Lancelotto called himself Lanzarote (lan-zah-roh-tay), and map-makers used it. The island along with the rest of the Canaries was colonized by Spain throughout the 1400s, and prospered with its volcanic soil. Until, that is, massive volcanic eruptions in the 1730s with over 30 major new volcanoes and over 100 small cinder cones flooded hundreds of square kilometers with lava.
The island became a mostly useless wasteland until a Lazarotean artistic genius named Cesar Manrique (1919-1992) transformed the lava fields into a surrealistic wonderland. The photo above is one of his many creations, the home Cesar designed and built on a lava cliff for actor Omar Sharif.
Today, visitors flock to Lanzarote to marvel at Manrique’s masterpieces scattered over the island, gape at the volcanic moonscape of Timanfaya, and to wine, dine, and luxuriate at gorgeous beach resorts. Come to the Island of Lancelot for an experience like nowhere else, one you’ll never forget. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #284 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
IS TEXAS AMERICA’S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?
[This Monday’s Archive was originally posted on January 22, 2013. It chronicles the unbelievable struggle of Texas to be free of unimaginable savagery in the 1800s. Now Texas is struggling to be free of the savagery wrought upon it by the Hate America Democrats with their creation of illegal alien invasion. Yet the lesson here goes far beyond our borders. It is the lesson of what it takes to defeat the savagery of Hamas in Israel, or the savagery of Putin in Ukraine. This history of Texas may astound you. See how it applies to our world right now.]
TTP, January 22, 2013
The years after the Civil War, the late 1860s, were worse – especially for Texas, which disintegrated into anarchic chaos. The victorious Yankees were almost happy to see the Rebels of Texas punished with Comanche murder-rape raids. Further, the Washington intelligentsia blamed the white men for them.
Yes, America has suffered from stupid and destructive liberal appeasement for a very long time. In a Comanche chief’s words, their code was: “Go on warpath, kill and scalp white people, steal many horses, then make treaty to get many presents and good things.”
FLASHBACK FRIDAY — “THIS IS YOUR LIFE”
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)
DAVOS ENDS WITH VIRGIN SACRIFICE TO WEATHER GODS TO PREVENT CLIMATE CHANGE
DAVOS — Members and invited attendees of this week's World Economic Forum's annual summit in Davos, Switzerland capped off yet another monumental event with the traditional virgin sacrifice to weather gods to prevent climate change.
The closing ceremony, complete with dancing natives and the chanting of ancient incantations, was met with a combination of reverence and celebration as the WEF's gathering of global powerbrokers offered up yet another young virgin to appease the climate gods.
"May the blood of this young woman grant us favor in your eyes!" shouted WEF Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab as the young woman ritualistically met her end. "Accept her soul as payment for our great sins against our planet and bless us with a year full of bountiful crickets and abundant mealworms. May the fate of a large percentage of humanity be the same as this virgin."
"It wouldn't be a WEF event without someone being sacrificed to the gods," said one proud attendee. "Praise be to Klaus Schwab and the deities who thirst for peasant blood."
At publishing time, following the conclusion of the sacrifice, attendees departed with their WEF gift bags full of fudge, body lotion, and detailed instructions on the roles they would each play in the further degradation of Western Civilization. Babylon Bee reporting.