Things to do
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Patagonia National Park
A sheep estancia of 80,000 hectares bought by Douglas and Kristine Tompkins in 2004, emptied of livestock, fenced free and handed to the state in 2018 as the core of a park that now joins Jeinimeni and Tamango. Guanaco, flamingos and the occasional puma are seen from the road; the visitor centre and trailheads are in the Chacabuco valley, open all year, quietest outside January.
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Confluencia de los ríos Baker y Nef
The point where the glacial-grey Nef joins the turquoise Baker in a set of rapids, twenty minutes' walk from a lay-by on the Carretera Austral north of the park turn-off. A short, well-marked path ends on rock above the meeting of the two colours; the site is unfenced and the spray is constant in spring flow.
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Lago Cochrane
A deep glacial lake shared with Argentina, where it is Lago Pueyrredón, reached from the town by the road into the old Tamango reserve. The water is clear enough to see the bottom several metres down, and the lakeside trail through the huemul deer habitat is the easiest chance in Chile of seeing one, with sightings most likely early in the morning.
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Lagunas Altas Trail
The park's signature day walk, a 23-kilometre loop from the Westwinds campsite that climbs through lenga forest to a chain of small lakes on the Tamango ridge and looks down the whole valley to the Baker. Seven hours for a fit walker, exposed to wind above the treeline, with no water past the last lake; carry the day's supply from the start.
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Valle Chacabuco
A broad east-west valley of grassland and lenga forest running from the Carretera Austral to the Argentine border at Paso Roballos, once the largest sheep station in Aysén. The road through it is gravel, driveable in a normal car in summer, with guanaco herds on the flats and the park's stone buildings at the western end.
