Torres del Paine, Chile

TORRES DEL PAINE, CHILE | "The Blue Towers"

Torres del Paine National Park is the most dramatically beautiful landscape in the Southern Hemisphere — a 1,814 square kilometer protected area in the Magallanes Region of Chilean Patagonia where three granite towers rising to 2,884 meters above the Patagonian steppe, the turquoise lakes fed by the Grey Glacier, the herds of guanaco crossing the open plain, and the legendary Patagonian wind that can knock a standing person sideways create a landscape of such raw geological power and biological vitality that it has been designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and consistently ranks among the world's greatest natural landscapes. The towers themselves — vertical shafts of Cretaceous granite intruded through the Patagonian steppe approximately 12 million years ago and exposed by glacial erosion — are visible from 50 kilometers away and serve as the compass point for every route in the park.

The colors are the specific Patagonian palette of sky and stone: the extraordinary turquoise of the glacially-fed lakes that exists in no other shade in nature, the deep grey of the granite towers, the warm golden-brown of the Patagonian steppe grass in summer, and the deep cobalt blue of the sky on the rare clear days when the notorious Patagonian weather relents and the full panorama of the park is visible in a single frame.