It has not escaped my attention that 2026 will signify a decade since I started writing this blog, and so, I thought it would be a good opportunity to mark the occasion by ticking a fairly significant cycle-touring challenge off my list: namely, the Carretera Austral, or ‘Southern Highway’.

The Carretera Austral is an 800 mile sliver of tarmac and gravel, that cuts through a sparsely populated, and geographically complex, portion of Chile’s Patagonian Lake District. Begun by General Pinochet in 1976, the route was only fully realised in 2000, and links a series of tiny – previously isolated – coastal communities between Puerto Montt in the north, and Villa O’Higgins in the south.

As Villa O’Higgins is a long way from an airport that offers regular commercially-available flights, there is the added complication that I will need to push on farther south, via a combination of ferries and hike-a-bike, to reach a remote Argentinian border post near the popular trekking hub of El Chaltén, before continuing southwards and ultimately crossing back into Chile, ending the trip in Puerto Natales, which, conveniently, offers the dual purpose of providing a means to onward flights, and also acting as the perfect launchpad for visiting one of my longest-serving bucket list destinations, Torres Del Paine National Park.

It would be something of an understatement to say that I am extremely excited about having the opportunity to undertake this adventure, one that I had been contemplating for many years, before seriously considering it for last winter. Then, when I spotted that Pierre – who I cycled with in Vietnam in 2020 – was attempting the route, I was determined to get – not only – some advice about the challenges he had encountered, but also an endorsement that I should do it too…

• bikepacking
• cycle-touring