Torres del Paine, Patagonia

I have a simple benchmark for whether a place is worth the journey: does it change how I see everything else afterwards? Torres del Paine changed everything. I hiked the full W circuit over five days in November — the last week before the summer crowds — and the scale is beyond any photograph I've seen. The towers themselves are 2,500-metre granite pillars that rise vertically from the landscape; at dawn on a clear morning they turn pink and then gold and the reflection in the lake below is so perfect it looks composited. I cried. I'm telling you this because it's true: I've photographed six continents and I cried looking at a mountain. Glacier Grey calves blue ice into the lake and in the early morning you hear it fall. The wind in Patagonia is constant and sometimes violent — bring everything rated for 100km/h gusts. Go in November–December or February–March. Accept that the weather will do what it wants. The rewards are enormous.