Chile’s Carretera Austral highway through Patagonia is about 1,240 km long.
The highway is officially Route 7 and runs from Puerto Montt south to Villa O’Higgins. It links remote communities and landscapes in the Los Lagos and Aysén regions, passing forests, fjords, glaciers, rivers and major destinations such as Coyhaique and General Carrera Lake.
The route was built to connect isolated southern Chile more directly with the rest of the country. Construction began during the military government, involved more than 10,000 soldiers, and opened progressively. The final roughly 100-kilometre section to Villa O’Higgins opened in 2000.
The distance describes the principal Puerto Montt–Villa O’Higgins route, not every side road or proposed extension toward Magallanes. Travellers must also use ferry crossings, including the crossing near Puerto Yungay, so the highway is not a continuous paved road. Much of it remains gravel, and published figures sometimes round the total to “more than 1,200 km.”