France
Piana Calanques
Red granite twisted into beasts and organ pipes by the wind, above a turquoise void.
The granite has been twisted into shapes that change with every degree of light — a dog's head, organ pipes, arches, a bestiary of forms that wind and sea have worked out of red rock. The Calanques de Piana, on French Corsica's west coast, drop from the coast road into a turquoise void, the water so far below that the boats are white specks against rock the colour of old blood.
Between Porto and Piana the narrow, twisting road clings in corniche to walls of red granite that fall sheer into the sea — the Calanques de Piana, part of the World Heritage listing that also covers the Gulf of Porto and the Scandola reserve. Short paths leave the road into the formations, so that you walk between pillars twice your height with the sea framed through arches, and the rock shifts from orange at dawn through crimson to violet as the sun goes down over the gulf. Boats from Porto take you beneath the calanques at water level, into caves and under overhangs whose scale is invisible from above, and the coves below are reached only by scramble or by sea. The road is single-lane in places, and the walkers' paths leave it for the rock.
Solo
The path from the road into the formations puts you inside the geology — pillars twice your height, the sea visible through arches. The colour shift through the day makes a morning visit and an evening return feel like two different places.
Couple
The boat from Porto threads beneath the overhangs with the red rock reflected in turquoise water. The corniche at sunset, the formations turning violet against a darkening sea, is a shared visual experience that needs no narration.
- Red granite has been worked by wind and sea into beasts, organ pipes and arches — the shapes shift as the light moves.
- The boat from Porto threads through sea caves and beneath overhanging cliffs — the scale is only clear from water level.
- The corniche road between Porto and Piana clings to red granite walls that fall sheer into the sea — every bend reveals a new formation.
- Swimming coves reached only by scramble or boat offer isolation with the red cliffs as backdrop.
Wild boar stew with myrtle — the quintessential Corsican mountain dish — at a Piana restaurant after the walk.
Corsican clementines — tiny, intensely sweet, eaten sun-warm — the island's winter fruit.
Triton Bay
Indonesia
Rock art painted millennia ago looks down on reefs carpeted in soft coral.
Glaciar Jorge Montt
Chile
A long Patagonian navigation approaches a tidewater glacier at the icefield's northern edge.
Parque Nacional Alberto de Agostini
Chile
Expedition boats navigate glaciers and black fjords beneath the Cordillera Darwin.
French Pass
New Zealand
A tidal race so fierce that whirlpools churn the gap on every running tide.
Vézelay
France
A hilltop basilica of light and carved stone where two crusades were preached into being.
Conques
France
A Romanesque abbey glowing gold in a gorge where medieval pilgrims wept at the tympanum.
Sainte-Enimie
France
A medieval village wedged into the Tarn gorge so tightly the river runs through its gardens.
Roussillon
France
Ochre cliffs bleeding every shade from cream to blood-red into the village walls themselves.