Chile

Chile

The granite towers appear through cloud and then disappear again, which is most of what Patagonia does to you. Wind here isn't weather, it's physics: a sustained horizontal force that leans you sideways on ridge trails and rips tent stakes from the ground. The park is raw in a way that feels less like scenery and more like a reminder that you are small and the mountains do not care.

Chile

The moai stare inland, not at you. That detail takes a moment to register when you're standing at Ahu Tongariki at sunrise, fifteen stone figures with their backs to the Pacific. The island is small enough to drive in an hour, windy almost always, and the grass is a particular shade of green that only exists where the ocean is 2,000km in every direction.