Gravel crunches as we pull off the road near jade green Laguna Amarga. The March air is fresh as we look west, beyond the water and grazing llama-like guanaco, for our first view of Chile’s Paine Massif.

There at last, centre stage, jauntily capped by fleecy white clouds against pastel blue, are Monte Almirante Nieto and the three Torres del Paine – pronounced ‘Pie-nay’, meaning ‘blue’ in the local Tehuelche language.

It is among the world’s most distinctive mountain views, up there with Mt Fuji, Everest seen from Kala Patthar or the Bernese Oberland’s classic Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau triptych.

North from Punta Arenas

The drama of that first sighting is heightened after driving 370 km north from Punta Arenas. We’ve followed often arrow-straight Ruta 9 – aka ‘Ruta del Fin del Mundo’ – for hours across Chilean Patagonia’s ex-pansive plains. It’s low-horizon, big-sky country, as different as could be from the towering peaks beyond the lake.

On the way, hungry after an early flight south from Puerto Montt, we lunched at historic Estancia Cerro Negro. It’s been owned by the – originally Croatian – Kusanovic family since the 1940s. There, overlooking the plain’s distant stands of lenga beech, we anticipated our destination over impossibly delicious lamb. We were, after all, in the heart of Chile’s sheep country; if anyone knows about melt-in-the-mouth Patagonian lamb it’s the Kusanovics.

Amazing wildlife

Later, beneath the sky-scraping rock towers that give Torres del Paine National Park its name, so close that you crane your neck to view their faces, the eco-hotel Las Torres Patagonia is a stunning base. It’s perfect for hiking, horseback trekking, and amazing wildlife spotting; imagine guanacos, Southern grey foxes, condors, shy pumas and even-more elusive huemel deer.

Then your gaze is drawn inexorably back to those granitic and metamorphic spires. They are irresistible as their rugged visage alters with each subtle change of light. No wonder they sneak into so many of our photographs.

It’s an adventure just reaching the towers’ feet, let alone exploring shorter local hiking routes or tackling the park’s famous multi-day ‘W’ or ‘O’ treks. Whether you choose hard-core trekking or stay closer to the comforts of Las Torres Patagonia, your visit grants a privileged walk-on role in a truly-iconic, impossible-to-forget, glaciated landscape.

The southern hemisphere autumn in this UNESCO-protected biosphere reserve is an awe-inspiring joy. How about putting it on your 2022 travel list?