Patagonia car rental: best companies and 7 things to know

While renting a car in Patagonia doesn’t differ too much from renting in other places in the world, there are some things that you should be aware of.

For example, things that are the same as everywhere else. You’ll probably get a sum of money blocked on your card for car insurance excess cover, so be ready for that, and if more than one of you plans to drive, you might need to let the car rental know.

But there are some things specific to the region that you need to take into account when renting a car in Patagonia. For example, if you want to cross the border from Chile to Argentina or the opposite direction, your Patagonia car rental company has to create a special insurance form.

So in this article I’ll tell you about different car rental companies in Patagonia – both Chilean and Argentinian, and then I’ll list some of the things you should know before renting a car in this remote corner of the world.

Let’s dive in!

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Different car rental companies in Patagonia

Both Chilean Patagonia (Punta Arenas) and Argentine Patagonia (El Calafate) offer small local car rental companies and bigger international ones. But there are not too many of them altogether.

We chose to rent our car in Punta Arenas for a couple of reasons.

First, we were mostly travelling through Chile, so it was convenient to fly from Santiago to Punta Arenas. Second, it was actually cheaper to rent in Punta Arenas than somewhere else.

We contacted some of the smaller companies and researched reviews of the bigger international ones. In the end, we decided to rent from a smaller local rental company – Adel rent a car in Punta Arenas – because the price seemed the most reasonable and the communication with Gerson, the owner, was very good.

In the following paragraphs, I’ll list some of the companies that I’ve found both in Chilean and Argentine Patagonia.

Car rentals in Chilean Patagonia

There are two main hubs to rent a car in Southern Chilean Patagonia – Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales. Theoretically, you could rent in Puerto Montt as well, although it is further away from the Torres del Paine National Park.

Although Puerto Natales is the gateway for the Torres del Paine, we suggest renting your car in Punta Arenas, as there are more rentals available there and they’re generally cheaper.

There are a few local companies in Punta Arenas to rent from, which generally don’t have many rental cars, so, if you choose to rent from these, make sure to rent plenty of time before your trip.

But you can find some bigger international brands as well, for example, Keddy by Europcar or Avis.

You can rent a car both at Punta Arenas airport and in the town itself. However, even if you decide to rent in the town, you can ask the rental company if they’d be willing to bring the car to the airport.

From the smaller companies, the car rental in Punta Arenas that we had a good experience with was Adel rent a Car Punta Arenas. You can read more about it in our review.

Altos de Punta Arenas is another one that seems to have good ratings. It has cars with automatic transmissions for reasonable prices.

And the third, which I mentioned already before, is Mitta. It seems to have good reviews and quite good prices.

The average price of a rental car in Chilean Patagonia starts from 332USD for a week.

Car rentals in Argentine Patagonia

If you prefer renting a car in Argentina instead of Chile, then we’d suggest doing it in El Calafate, as it’s the most convenient spot for exploring Patagonia.

Theoretically, you can even rent in El Chalten as well, although it seems to be more expensive because they charge AR$5000 for the drop-off in El Chalten.

El Calafate has both bigger international car hires and smaller ones available so renting a car in El Calafate is another good option.

The big ones are such known brands as Europcar, Hertz and Sixt.

The smaller ones are, among others, Nunatak, Localiza and Servi Car.

Nunatak has the best reviews on Google, although they do have some concerning reviews on Tripadvisor from 2014. Localiza and Servi Car are both suggested by the Lonely Planet book about Argentina.

So, how to choose the best car rental in Patagonia for you?

Well, it really depends on what you want and need. I can’t tell you which company is the best, as everyone’s experiences are different.

Obviously, you should read some reviews online, but try to take into account the time when they were written as well.

And I’d recommend contacting the companies and seeing which ones you “click” with. We ourselves contacted three car rental companies in Punta Arenas to see which ones sounded the best. But before that, we read a bunch of reviews and compared offers and prices. Then we chose the one that seemed the best across the board.

Things to know about renting a car in Patagonia

1. Most cars have manual transmission

It is rare to find a car rental in Patagonia that will have an automatic transmission, so make sure you know how to drive it.

There are, of course, cars with automatic transmission available, too. Just from what I could see, they are on average twice as expensive as the ones with a manual transmission.

2. You don’t need a 4-wheel drive

You don’t really need a 4 wheel drive, unless you’re more used to driving it. Of course, many of the roads in Patagonia are gravel roads, especially in Torres del Paine. And yes, they do tend to have potholes, as the weather is rainy.

But at the same time, if you drive carefully and slow down before the potholes, it’s completely ok to have a 2-wheel drive. We drove such a car – a small manual two-wheel drive car – and didn’t have any problems at all.

So, if you choose to follow our 10 day Patagonia itinerary, don’t worry about getting an all-wheel drive car.

3. Book ahead of time

There is a limited number of companies and cars, but quite a huge number of tourists. So make sure to book your company with quite a time to spare, especially if going in summer (that’s from December to February in Patagonia)!

Plus, you never know what can happen. We had a problem with Transferwise when trying to pay for our rental car, which took a bit of time to resolve. It would have been very stressful if we were renting at the last minute.

If you choose a car rental in one of the bigger car rentals in one of the bigger towns (Punta Arenas or El Calafate), it’s not so bad.

4. Dropoff in other places, not the original rental city, is very expensive

And I’m not just talking about renting in Chile and dropping off the car in Argentina – it’s hard and rather expensive. I actually saw just one car rental company that allowed it.

If you rent your car in Santiago (Chile) and plan on dropping it off in Punta Arenas, for example, it can cost even more than 1700USD, but definitely upwards of 500 USD in addition to the rental price.

So it might be a better idea to just do a loop in Patagonia – for example, we rented in Punta Arenas, went to El Calafate, and drove back to Punta Arenas to drop the car off. And it was cheaper than renting a car in Punta Arenas and dropping it off in some other place.

5. You need a permit to cross the border in Patagonia in your rental car

If you’re renting a car, you probably plan to cross the border as well.

Can you rent a car in Chile and drive it to Argentina? Yes, you can. There’s a caveat, though.

The rental car company needs to issue a specific permit to you for crossing the Chile-Argentina border. Of course, this costs an additional sum of money.

Since the permission documents take time to arrange, make sure to let your rental company know about your intentions to cross the border at least 2 weeks in advance.

And make sure that you know where the papers are located, as you will need to show them to the border guards.

6. And you need proper insurance to cross the border in Patagonia, as well

Again, your car rental in Patagonia must prepare insurance that covers the other country as well, not just the original. For example, if you rent in Chile, then the car insurance might not be valid in Argentina unless the car company arranges it.

Of course, you will have to pay additionally for it.

Make sure to contact the company and find out if they offer the coverage!

7. But the good news – renting a car in Patagonia is not that much more expensive

Depending on when you go, Patagonia car rentals can even be quite cheap! I checked how much it would be for 3 days in March, and the lowest price I saw was 120 euros. That’s honestly really cheap!

The company I checked was Mitta on rentalcars.com and it even seems to have quite good reviews – 8.3 out of 10 at the time of writing this article.

Especially if you rent as a group – honestly, sometimes it works cheaper if you rent a car than take a bus, even if you decide to do something like the W trek.

Last thoughts about renting a car in Patagonia

Renting a car in Patagonia might be the second most expensive thing on your Patagonia budget – straight after the accommodation -, but honestly, it is worth it. Of course, unless you specifically want to do a lot of hikes.

It gives you freedom, lets you be flexible, and allows you to enjoy things you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. And that’s what you need when visiting Patagonia.

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