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 606 km, Coyhaique to the finish - roughly 10 h 56 in the saddle. On the way it passes Cerro Castillo, Puerto Rio Tranquilo, Cochrane and Caleta Tortel. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 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.
Coyhaique is the biggest town in Chile's Aysén region, and where the Carretera Austral really starts to feel like a frontier. It sits in a green valley at the meeting of two rivers, the Coyhaique and the Simpson, with steep forested ridges all around and a distinctive pentagonal main square. People here are used to long distances and bad weather, and the town has the practical feel of a place that serves the farms, fishing villages and mountain lodges strung out along the highway.
Read the complete Coyhaique write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Coyhaique is where the day begins. Next is Cerro Castillo.
The mountain that gives this village its name looks like exactly what it is called, a castle. The jagged ridge of Cerro Castillo rises above the Carretera Austral in a crown of dark towers and spires, streaked with snow and hanging glaciers, and from the road it fills the sky. It lies in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia, about a hundred kilometres south of Coyhaique, and the surrounding national reserve protects the peaks, lakes and valleys beneath. The village at its foot is small, with a few guesthouses and a place or two to eat, and it exists mostly because the road stops here.
Read the complete Cerro Castillo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cerro Castillo comes up about 96 km into the recorded legs. Next is Puerto Rio Tranquilo.
Puerto Río Tranquilo is a small settlement on the western shore of Lago General Carrera, the vast lake that Chile shares with Argentina, where it is known as Lago Buenos Aires. The water here has a startling colour, a milky turquoise caused by glacial flour, and the lake is so big that the far shore is lost in haze. The village itself is a handful of streets with wooden houses, guesthouses and boat operators, and a population of only a few hundred.
Read the complete Puerto Rio Tranquilo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 216 km into the recorded legs you reach Puerto Rio Tranquilo. Next is Cochrane.
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, about halfway. 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 sits at 736 km, late in the day. 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 606 km.
Coyhaique → Cerro Castillo is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Cerro Castillo → Puerto Rio Tranquilo is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Puerto Río Tranquilo → Cochrane is 114 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
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.