Carretera Austral Travel Guide

The Carretera Austral is a single road running roughly 1,200 kilometers through the least populated part of Chile, and for long stretches it is the only road there is. It was cut through Aysén in the 1970s and 80s to connect towns that until then could only be reached by boat or small plane, and it still feels like an intrusion into somewhere that had not asked for one. Coyhaique is the only town of any real size along it.

The Marble Caves at Puerto Río Tranquilo are the image most people arrive having seen, water-carved chambers in a rock face on a lake that is almost too blue to believe. At Queulat a glacier hangs suspended between two cliffs with meltwater falling off both sides. And just off the road in Patagonia National Park, you have the opportunity to see wildlife such as guanacos and pumas.  What shapes the whole route, though, is the ferries, some of which need to be booked in advance and others that are first-come first-serve, dictating the amount of time you will spend going between destinations. Sections of the road are still unpaved and fuel stops are far apart, so boat timetables end up setting your schedule far more than distance does.

We drove the Carretera Austral in February and March 2026, south to north, over 50 days. It is the part almost nobody writing in English has actually driven. The road alone will fill a nine-day trip, though more time is always worth it, and pairing it with the Lakes and Volcanoes District where the road begins makes for an exceptional two weeks.