Blogs from Carretera Austral, Aisén, Chile, South America

After getting to the Carretera Austral at Villa O'Higgins we got on the road north towards Cochran which is about 260km away. Route 7 is 90% unpaved, with a stretch of tarmac around Cohaique, so it's quite a bumpy ride. The good thing is that there's so much water around we hardly have to carry any as we can fill up at any time and there's virtually no pollution so no need to filter it. We met a group of scottish cyclists on the way who told us about a town called Tortel. It's about 22km off the main road but they told us it is worth the detour. It's built in the hillside of a bay and all the houses are connected by a series of wooden walkways which wind like a maze over the ... read more

Ari, Brad, Dana and I decided that our first long trip in the 11th Region of Chile was to Chile Chico. There are two ways you can get there: by ferry from Puerto Ibañez or drive around the second largest lake of South America, Lago General Carrera (on the Chilean side) or Lago Buenos Aires (on the Argentinian side). In order to get a heads up, we started our journey Thursday around 8pm. Since it was dark we weren't able to appreciate nature around us. As soon as we woke up we discovered the breathtaking scenery all around us. It took us around 4 hours to drive around the lake from Bahia Murta to Chile Chico. We stopped every half hour or so to take pictures and see landscapes you can't see anywhere else in the ... read more

We started this stage of the trip in Chile Chico at the Argentinean border. A few km down the road on the Chilean side you can take the ferry to the other side of Lago the Buenos Aires. We decided to taken a short cut to the Carreta Austral (routa 7). It was an amazing road that went up high through wonderful mountain ranges and along steep cliffs and beautiful lake's. Along the way we had to drive around big rocks that fell on the road and often the guard rail was ripped to pieces and occasionally we saw land slides that damaged the road. We drove for four hours without seeing any cars! On the routa 7 we drove along the rio baker, the water of this river is green blue turquoise and very beautiful. ... read more

Never in the annals of time had the Amigos had such a manly adventure. There was the issue of who had booked the best and worst hotel/lodge and a points scoring competition had developed . Amigo Miller had planned the first half of the trip and Amigo Smee had responded with the second half. While Tortel had brought the competition near level on all parts of the experience, the lodge in Tortel had pushed Miller into the lead unfortunately by quite a bit, all be it budgets were in excellent shape for the second leg, while Miller's part was in tatters! Smee had to get thinking and planning, time was running out, as was the Carretera Austral. While Miller was out on another horse ride with another Senorita, (strange that) his lead became not so sure. ... read more

Now starts the real adventure and why we came to Chile. THE CARRETERA AUSTRAL. Simon and I read the below in a book and we just looked at each other and said “Let’s drive it” “Travelling along the Carretera Austral is one of the greatest journeys South America has to offer. The Carretera is largely an unpaved, gravel, single track RIPIO road stretching almost 1200km through spectacular ever-changing scenery and with similar length of branch roads to the fjords or the Andes Mountains of Patagonia beyond. Before the opening of the road in1995 (it took 20 years to build) this part of deep southern Chile was inaccessible; it remains breathtaking. The journey will take you past trees growing out of vertical cliffs, impenetrably thick millennial forests and burned pastures dotted with glacial debris; innumerable waterfalls rushing ... read more