A passport says a lot about a person. Besides the given such as nationality and identity, it is a glimpse into someone’s time spent abroad and the places they have travelled. It is a representation of one’s self in a literal yet more meaningful sense. It is also viewed as a ticket to freedom. With our new feature: Stamps, we pin down a seasoned globe trotter and take a look at their passport and get them to list their Top 5 travel destinations in words & photos, not only giving us insight into places we may have yet travelled to but hopefully encouraging some of us to add a few more stamps to the pages of our own passports.
Our first Stamps is with renowned travel photographer Pearce Leal. We tracked down Pearce and inspected his passport, before he dropped smoke and galavanted out the door again.
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1. Alaska – 64.0000° N, 150.0000° W
I don’t know whats in the air over there but it’s something special. Once you’ve arrived to one of Alaska’s many hidden nooks (usually by the means of a undersized plane or boat) and step out into the wilderness there is a sudden feeling of silence & solitude that is unlike any other place I’ve ever visited. There’s just so much nature crammed into one place that you find yourself not knowing where to set eyes. One moment you’ll be wandering through a pine forest that will open into a lake, in the distance lies a snow capped mountain and finally, in this already incredible frame, a small dot moves on the horizon, that dot being a bear. Shit, what more could you ask for…
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2. New Zealand - 42.0000° S, 174.0000° E 
That place over the ditch, the long white cloud – New Zealand, my country of origin. A land that will always have a big pull on me not just because I was born there, but because of everything in-between that is has to offer. There is no light that will portray this place in a bad way. Everything to be seen is aesthetically pleasing. Best way to explore this place is by van. Just pack it full of cheap tinned food, a sleeping bag, a map, a raincoat, umbrella and camera gear and watch the mountains run endlessly into the horizon.
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3. Bolivia ~ Atacama Desert - 24.5000° S, 69.2500° W
Aside from the altitude headaches, constant dry mouth and freezing to normal temperature differences, the Atacama Desert is like something out of a dream. Very little in this world comes close to what you will discover in this arid wasteland. Step out of the 4WD, and you’ll feel like you’ve just walked onto another planet. Nothing seems to fit. A place that rarely receives rain, I mean rarely; no more than 2 – 4 times per century the skies will open up, but as your’e driving through this mind boggling place, you’ll spot snow and ice formations, and that’s just the start of things to come.

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4. Chile ~ Torres Del Paine - 51.0000° S, 73.0000° W
I have a weakness for mountains. That weakness will definitely not come to end passing through this particular part of the Andes.
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5. Iceland- 65.0000° N, 18.0000° W
 
A country that just seems to have been discovered by the world (I have no clue why). With old and new volcanic activity, the landscape is characterised by lava fields, glaciers, mountains and finally these ridiculous towering waterfalls. I find that I can only describe this place with photographs. For such a small country it’s super difficult to portray in a single frame what exactly is going on over there.
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