CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A one-way ride of 276 km, Cochrane to the finish - roughly 5 h 00 in the saddle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,050 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Chile into Argentina - carry ID and check the toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Cochrane is the town you remember because it is the last proper one. South of here the Carretera Austral thins out into a road with more rivers than villages, and the whole way down to Villa O'Higgins it will be mostly gravel, with only a few small settlements. Cochrane has around three thousand people, a tidy square, a handful of hospedajes and shops, and one of the last reliable fuel pumps in the region, so this is where you fill up and eat something properly before continuing.
Read the complete Cochrane write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cochrane is where the day begins. Next is Caleta Tortel.
Caleta Tortel has no streets. The village hangs off the rocky shore of a fjord in southern Chilean Patagonia, and everything, from the church to the post office to the family houses, is joined by boardwalks and stairways of cypress timber that rise and fall with the slope. Wheels are left at the top, and so are motorbikes, because the whole place is a footpath. The wood is the local ciprés de las Guaitecas, which resists rot in the constant rain, and the walkways give off a damp, resinous smell that you notice as soon as you step off the road.
Read the complete Caleta Tortel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Caleta Tortel comes up about 126 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa O Higgins.
The Carretera Austral runs out here, and it does not so much end as dissolve into lake, ice and forest. Villa O'Higgins is a village of a few hundred people at the southern tip of the road, on the shore of an arm of Lago O'Higgins, in a landscape of glaciers, fjords and beech forest that is among the wildest in South America. The road itself, Ruta 7, was a pet project of the military government, pushed through the Patagonian wilderness from Puerto Montt over many years, and reached this final village only in 1999. Before that, the settlers who came to this valley in the 1960s had to bring everything by boat or on foot.
Read the complete Villa O Higgins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 276 km.
Cochrane → Caleta Tortel is 126 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Caleta Tortel → Villa O Higgins is 150 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.