The weather gods seemed to be on our side as this morning was mostly clear and sunny. We continued south through Parque Alerces past beautiful clear lakes and river, with snow capped mountains, with some fresh snow, in the background. Along the way we saw many campers and a number of RVs made from converted trucks. Argentines seem to be avid campers.

From the south end of the park a short section of pavement took us to the town Trevelin. Then onto gravel again and highway 259 to the Chilean border and a few kms farther the town of Futaleufu - I should offer a small reward to anyone that can pronounce this without help.

For us Futaleufu is the start of the Carretera Austral (the south road) a road that connects all of the towns in the south east corner of Chile. Access to this road from the rest of Chile is by ferry and the only road access to the area is from Argentina. Construction started back in the 1980's at the order of General Pinochet in order to strengthen Chiles claim to the land of western patagonia but the road was only finished in 1996. The Austral runs from Puerto Montt in the north then via some longish ferry legs to Chaiten thence to Villa O'Higgins in the south and in total is 1240km of mostly gravel road. We joined the Austral proper, also called highway 7, at the village of Santa Lucia about 70km south of Chaiten.

Our good weather continued as we drove from Futaluefu to Santa Lucia which afforded us wonderful views of the jagged mountains, crystal clear lakes and one wide very wild river that was being enjoyed by a group of intrepid kayakers.