Chile

The length of the country almost, from the driest desert on earth to glaciers at the far end of Patagonia — more bus journeys than I can count, most of them overnight, most of them longer than they had any right to be. Chile is where the trip stopped being one country at a time and started feeling like one long corridor south.

It's also where I did some of the hardest trekking of the year, learned to plan around wind rather than rain, and spent more nights camping than in any other country on the list.