The Carretera Austral is ranking as one of the world’s ultimate road trips. It runs for about 1240 km, mostly unpaved through the mountains and forest of Northern Patagonia. It was a prestigious project of Chile’s former dictator Pinochet, who started building this road in 1976 (only to be finished in 1996), more for symbolic reasons than common sense as he wanted to have a road that tied the whole country together. The road cost a fortune to build due to the remoteness and harsh climate and 11 workers lost their lives in these 20 years. We planned to do about 750 km of this road as we couldn’t get to the northern end as the limited ferry service was booked full. We also missed the southern end as at the border crossing to Argentina, only Chile has built a road. This meant that after crossing the border we had to cross a river without bridge and some rough terrain, which I was up for, but which hasn’t been done a lot before and after enquiring in Coyhaique and several calls to police in Villa O’Higgins we were told that due to the hot water and melting glaciers, the river was too high to cross by 4WDs, only trucks can go through. So here’s our report of the middle section of the Carretera Austral we drove.

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