Carretera Austral – Nov 2025
The Carretera Austral was the least structured part of the trip with around 3 weeks to see how far south we could get, and which way we might get back. Despite being the least structured it probably had the most research put into it before we left.
The Carretera Austral is the name given to Chile’s Highway (Ruta) 7. It is a 1,240km stretch of road passing through some incredibly scenic landscape. The southern end of it at Villa O’Higgins is a dead-end for vehicles, though cyclists and pedestrians can go cross-country, with some logistical challenges, to El Chaltén in Argentina. Due to the terrain – glaciers, mountains, fjords – some sections require ferry travel to access them. The highway is mainly sealed to Villa Cerro Castillo. There are whole guidebooks dedicated to it, and while it might have still been ‘off the radar’ 15 years ago it is definitely well travelled now days.
The main decisions to be made in advance are how are you going to travel it:
- Will you hire a car?
- If so what sort? 4WD? Camper trailer?
- One way hire or loop?
- Are you going into Argentina?
- Where are you starting from?
- What sections are you doing?
- If not a car then what? Hitch-hike? Bus? Cycle?
- Camping or not?
You need to work through the various options, as they all have their own difficulties. Eventually we settled on doing a loop trip out of Puerto Montt. We concluded that one way hire, for at least the options we were considering, was expensive, difficult and added a whole lot of boring driving on the Argentinian side. We decided to go with an SUV rather than a 4WD – since all the information we could find suggested that a 4WD was a nice to have rather than a necessity if just doing the main route (and it saved a significant amount of money). With the variability of the weather we decided not to rely on camping (despite my use of the tent icon on the map!).
Even with the broad brush decisions made there were lots of decisions which were going to happen on the road – we expected these to be largely based on the weather.
The plan already had 3 nights in Puerto Varas at the start, as we were expecting to be tired after the involved travel days from Cusco to San Pedro de Atacama. However, we arrived in Puerto Varas sick as well as tired, and at that stage the whole trip just seemed so overwhelming we were contemplating just heading north to Pucón and hiring a house on a lake for a week.
Fortunately after a couple of days in our lovely AirBnB we were feeling slightly more inspired and with a less aggressive start managed to get on our way.
I’ve split the trip up into 4 sections:
- Days 0-4: Puerto Varas – Chaitén
- Days 5-7: Chaitén – Puerto Gaudal
- Days 8-11: Patagonia National Park
- Days 12-19: Cochrane – Puerto Varas
| Day | Date | Finish | Driving Km | Travel time | Activity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fri 31/10/25 | Puerto Varas | Rest & recover | |||
| Sat 01/11/25 | Puerto Varas | 0 | Rest & recover | ||
| 1 | Sun 02/11/25 | Hornopiren | 125 | 2h 45 + 30 min ferry | Travel |
| 2 | Mon 03/11/25 | Chaitén | 135 | 1h 20 + 5h 30 ferry | Travel, Pumalin NP Day 1: Cascadas, Los Alerces Trails |
| 3 | Tue 04/11/25 | Chaitén | 90 | 2h | Pumalin NP Day 2: Laguna Tronador, Volcan Chaitén Trails |
| 4 | Wed 05/11/25 | Chaitén | 60 | 1h | Pumalin NP Day 3: El Mirador, Darwin’s Frog Trails |
| 5 | Thu 06/11/25 | Puyuhuapi | 235 | 4h | Ventisquero Yelcho Trail, Queuelat NP |
| 6 | Fri 07/11/25 | Villa Cerro Castillo | 328 | 6h | Travel & resupply |
| 7 | Sat 08/11/25 | Puerto Gaudal | 143 | 2h 30 + 2h 30 ferry | Travel / scenic drive |
| 8 | Sun 09/11/25 | West Winds Campground | 70 | 1h 45 | Patagonia NP: La Vega Trail, Sendora Cañadón Chacabuco |
| 9 | Mon 10/11/25 | West Winds Campground | 0 | Patagonia NP: Lagunas Altas Trail | |
| 10 | Tue 11/11/25 | Cochrane | 82 | 3h | Patagonia NP: Avilés Trail |
| 11 | Wed 12/11/25 | Cochrane | 10 | 20m | Patagonia NP (Tamango Sector): Los Carpinteros Trail |
| 12 | Thu 13/11/25 | Villa Cerro Castillo | 232 | 4h 40 | Marble Caves boat tour |
| 13 | Fri 14/11/25 | Coyhaique | 95 | 1h 30 | Bad weather |
| 14 | Sat 15/11/25 | Coyhaique | 0 | Bad weather / walk around town | |
| 15 | Sun 16/11/25 | Puerto Cisnes Ferry | 207 | 3h 15 + 23h ferry | Travel |
| 16 | Mon 17/11/25 | Cucao | 82 | 1h 10 | Travel (stuck on ferry) |
| 17 | Tue 18/11/25 | Cucao | 45 | 1h 10 | Muelle de las Almas, Chiloe NP |
| 18 | Wed 19/11/25 | Puerto Varas | 225 | 3h 15 + 30 min ferry | Travel |
| 19 | Thu 20/11/25 | Puerto Varas | 110 | 2h | Vicente Pérez Rosales NP |
| Total Kilometres: | 2,274 |
There were a couple of things we’d read before we went that didn’t match our experience:
- “You need to carry lots of cash” – we only used cash in 2 places during our time on the Carretera Austral: for accom in Villa Cerro Castillo & for the Marble Caves boat tour. Everywhere else we were able to use credit card. We could have got more expensive accom in Villa Cerro Castillo using credit card.
- “Fill up the car with petrol every opportunity” – we were driving a relatively fuel efficient vehicle, so maybe our range was a bit better than driving a camper trailer? We didn’t feel any anxiety about this and had no issues getting fuel.
Bear in mind that we were travelling in shoulder season (November), and only went as far south as Cochrane. Otherwise the only other thing which tripped us up was our hire car only had USB-C outlets, so we had no way to charge anything in the car. Bring a USB-A to USB-C adaptor!