Three of the world’s greatest road trips

Get the motor running and head out on the highway

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(Image credit: Credit: imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo)

The Carretera Austral (“the Southern Way”), Chile’s version of Route 66, is some 1,270km long, stretching from Puerto Montt to Villa O’Higgins, taking in rural Patagonia in southern Chile. It makes for “the world’s greatest road trip, through spectacular scenery, stringing together remote settlements that had almost no connection until [the road’s] arrival,” says Stanley Stewart in Condé Nast Traveller.

Masochistic cyclists from all around the globe “long to tackle” the Carretera, and no wonder – the scenery is “staggering”, says Stewart. Along its entire length, the Carretera is shadowed by the snow-capped heights of the Andes, “colossal, ravishing, unfathomable”. Stewart headed south from Balmaceda and the same afternoon reached General Carrera Lake.The next day, Stewart swapped his car for a small boat, and set sail for Laguna San Rafael and the San Rafael glacier. “Beyond and above was the Northern Ice Field, stretching as far as the eye could see.”

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