Part of the Chile Travel Guide
← Back to ChileThe 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 were reachable only by boat, and it still feels like an intrusion into somewhere that had not asked for one. Coyhaique is the only town of any size on 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 so blue it looks corrected. Queulat holds a glacier suspended between two cliffs with meltwater falling off both sides.
The constraint is the ferries and any road construction. Sections of the road are still unpaved, fuel stops are far apart, and the practical effect of all of it is that your schedule is set by boat timetables rather than by distance. Planning this route by kilometers is the standard mistake.
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.
Where the road begins, in the Chilean Lake District
The Carretera Austral starts at Puerto Montt, at the southern edge of the Lake District, and the first ferry leaves from just beyond it. Most people spend a night or two around Puerto Varas before heading south, partly to see the volcanoes and partly because it is the last place for a while with a real supermarket.
Chilean Lake District travel guideQuick Resources to Plan Your Trip to Chile