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 1405 km, Puerto Montt to the finish - roughly 27 h 37 in the saddle. On the way it passes Hornopiren, Chaiten, Futaleufu and Coyhaique. 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. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Puerto Montt is where the Carretera Austral starts, though few people would call it a pretty town. It is a busy port and salmon-farming centre on the Reloncaví Sound, with a grey waterfront, fish stalls and a rain record to match, and it was founded in 1853 by German colonists brought in under the direction of Vicente Pérez Rosales. Across the water, if the clouds allow, the cone of Osorno volcano shows up white against the sky, and the lakeside towns to the north, Puerto Varas and Frutillar, still show their Bavarian-style wooden houses.
Read the complete Puerto Montt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Puerto Montt is where the day begins. Next is Hornopiren.
Hornopirén is where the road gives up and the sea takes over. Here, on the edge of a long fjord, the Carretera Austral reaches a gap that engineers have never filled, and anyone heading south has to take a ferry for several hours through channels and inlets before the road resumes in Pumalín country. For riders coming from Puerto Montt, it is the first real taste of the end of the world: the town is small and weather-beaten, strung along the shore with wooden houses, boatyards and stacks of fishing gear.
Read the complete Hornopiren write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hornopirén comes up about 107 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chaiten.
Chaitén is a town that was almost removed from the map. In May 2008 the volcano of the same name, which nobody had thought to be dangerous, erupted without warning after thousands of years asleep. Ash covered the whole region, the Río Blanco burst its banks and carved a new channel straight through the middle of the town, and the government ordered a complete evacuation. For a while there were plans to abandon the place and build a new capital elsewhere. Many people returned anyway, and today Chaitén has a few thousand people, rebuilt streets, and a lingering sense of resilience. On the hills above, the volcano still steams, and you can see the grey scar of the lava dome from the road.
Read the complete Chaiten write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 241 km into the recorded legs you reach Chaiten. Next is Futaleufu.
The rafters know Futaleufú better than the motorcyclists do. The river that runs through this small town on the Chilean side of the Andes is one of the great whitewater rivers of the world, a startling turquoise torrent that comes down from Argentine lakes through a series of steep canyons, and kayakers and rafters travel here from around the globe to run it. The town of under two thousand people is a quiet place of low wooden houses, with a plaza and a handful of lodges, and the Andes standing white behind.
Read the complete Futaleufu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Futaleufu, about halfway. Next is Coyhaique.
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 sits at 1001 km, about halfway. 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 895 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 1015 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, late in the day. 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 2002 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.
Villa O Higgins closes the day.
Puerto Montt → Hornopiren is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Hornopirén → Chaiten is 134 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Chaitén → Futaleufu is 151 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Futaleufú → Coyhaique is 407 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
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.