Ruta 40 this year

[JulieBuny]

Hi All
Any information on the road conditions or old links on Ruta 40 and Carretera Austral. We will be travelling in Oct/Nov/Dec this year, two motorbikes.
Is it paved at all?
Accom along the way.

Cheers

[DLbiten]

Carretera Austral - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Route_40_(Argentina)?

Paved not so much but there some day they will have have the thing done. Look out for the wind some times its bad im told.


Abekas | Quality Broadcast Equipment dont know why but here you go.


like most places where there not a lot of people you cant alwas find a nice hotel room. But 1000 of people every year go down there and make it gust fine. So will you, your planing lots of time you wont need push 300 or 400 mile days.

[fazer_1000]

hey there buny,
i finished the caratera austral two weeks ago, and did some riding on ruta 40.
ruta 7 is unpaved at most it´s parts. there are some roughly around 200 km`s of pavement, mostly on the way north and south to the major city of coyhique. there are some roads also when going to chaiten (around 30 km) and to puerto aisen, puerto chacabuco (around 100+ km).
most of the off road is good, and they are working all the time to make it better and continue paving so it should be a lot better (or worse, depend what you like) next year.
there are hostels at every small village on the way and you can open a tent in any of the numerous camp sites or non-private properties along the road.
there is no road from villa o`higgins to argentina on the arg side! un passable with a moto.
there is one, really small, in paso roballos, east to cochrane (a small town).
get´s you to bajo caracoles on ruta 40, small village. buy the gas there cause the next station to the south would be in tres lagos, 340 km.
they are working on the new ruta 40 and paving it. now there is only 50 km paved on the way from bajo caracoles to tres lagos, the rest is off road. the winds that blew when i went there were TERRIBLE, the worst i´ve seen ever! very tough, with no place to stop.
anyway, buy gas everywhere you can, a lot of the times there is no gas at the station that you planned for and then you´re screwed.
bring warm cloths and good tires. oh and parts you might need, it´s hard to get (impossible almost.. only in rio gallegos, at that part).

cheers
asaf

[ssa2]

One small point is that you used to be able to get gas at La Serina which is a small place that has a few rooms to rent and food to eat and cold . They have a generator and sell gas out of a barell. It is between Tres Lagos and Baja Caroljes. I would think you would need to cary gas if you wanted to go all the way with that stop. Good place to spend the night as well as that is a long and nasty stretch of road.

[Sime66]

I was on Ruta 40 up towards the Chile Chico crossing a few weeks ago. My theory is that the wind starts getting really bad around lunchtime, so if you try and leave as early as possible in the morning you can usually escape it.

By "really bad" I mean getting blown off the bike and not being able to stand up! (That was only once, 100kms south of Gobernador Gregores). Didn't hurt anyway cos the gravel's nice and deep there.

Also I went round Lago Carrera (sp?) on the Carretera and it's amazing. Quite a lot of corrugations in places so you might want to check your luggage is still there once in a while...

[JulieBuny]

Does anybody have experience riding in Peru. We are predominantly tarmac riders but have ridden offroad. Is the inland route that runs pretty much parallel to the coast road okay to ride, we will have offroad tyres on. We are really wanting a more scenic approach thats all as have read the Coast road can be very boring and busy. :confused1: We will be riding two bikes at this stage but may change to two up.

We also have not found alot of information on getting from either Costa Rica to SA or Panama to SA. Either boat or flight info to Ecuador. Don't really want to do Colombia.
Thanks heaps.
JulieBunny