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Published: January 6th 2008
Puerto Puyuhuapi
The Carretera near Puerto PuyuhuapiWe arrived on the Carretera Austral via Trevelin, Argentina and Futaleufu. Though we only ended up driving the Carretera for 2 days rather than the originally planned 3 or 4, it was still a high point of our trip. The scenery is stunning and constantly changing and is some of the most beautiful I've seen anywhere on the planet.
If you decide to go, I would recommend the suggestions you'll find in all the guidebooks about being well-prepared-----you will be literally in the middle of nowhere on a poorly-surfaced dirt road with few houses and only a few widely spaced towns along the way. Carry water and food and be prepared for anything. It is no problem to drive with a normal compact car (as we did) but make sure the car is in excellent driving condition and I would carry an extra spare tire (we did that as well and thankfully didn't need it) and definitely fill your tank with gas at every station you see.
Here are some notes of some observations I took along the way:
The road from Trevelin onwards is gravel and it is very slow going. The roads aren't
that bad but not
that good either. Max. speed about 80 kph with average of 50-60 kph.
It took 8 hours to drive from El Bolson to Puerto Puyuhuapi. After you reach La Junta the road gets more narrow, the climate gets wetter and there is much more vegetation along the way----lots of nalca along the roadside. La Junta is much nicer than the Lonely Planet guide makes it out to be. It is a nice little town (with a gas station!!!) that wouldn't be a bad place to spend the night. On the route between Futaleufu and Puyuhuapi, it is the
only town...
Puerto Puyuhuapi is very small and doesn't have many places to eat or to stay----it does have a gas station----and it is very rainy and foggy in this area. Here the LP Guide let us down once again, recommending Cabanas Aonikenk as a good place to stay. They were very wrong-----it is not a nice place and Lorena said the people who run it were wierd and gave her the creeps. (a side note here----I've been using LP guides for years and I've found that in recent years they've become more and more unreliable and inaccurate. It was
at this point in our trip that I generally began to ignore their recommendations and just used the guide for the----often incorrect----information) Everyone else in town was very nice and indeed the town is pretty, if tiny. We stayed in the last hotel on the left as you leave heading south (I failed to record the name). It is a decent place but a little expensive----$50 usd with breakfast included-----and the same place would probably cost $20 usd in Argentina...
We got to see Ventisquero Colgante glacier for all of about 5 minutes before the clouds rolled in. The entrance to the glacier costs 3000 pesos . Camping there was about 5000 pesos and I think it would be a great place to camp-----as long as the rain holds off. There were toilets but I didn't see any other facilities. There is lots of road construction going on in this area south of Puyuhuapi and the road was completely closed to traffic from 1000am to 2pm. Traffic here is very sparce----maybe 1 car every 20 or 30 minutes----but the road is very narrow with lots of vegetation blocking one's vision. The road here demands absolute attention at all times
Puerto Puyuhuapi
Lorena and Flat Stanley in Puyuhuapi or
YOU WILL DIE!!! The scenery south of this section all the way to Coyhaique is very open and spectacular. Some of the road has paved sections and most of the last 2 hours or so heading south into Coyhaique is paved and very nice. Its odd because you go from driving one minute on pot-holed awful dirt roads to driving the next minute on world-class smooth asphalt and concrete roads and back again-----all in the middle of absolute wilderness...
Coyhaique is perhaps the cleanest, nicest, richest city I have ever seen in Chile. There are beautiful mountains all around the city with lots of open spaces. I could live here, definitely. I think it would be a great place to buy some land just outside of town and build a cabin...
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