Aysen Region

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**XI Región Aysen del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo**

See other Chilean regions
Capital	Coyhaique
Provinces	Coyhaique Aisén (province) General Carrera Capitán Prat
Area - Total	Ranked 3rd 108,494.4 km²
Population - 2002 Census - Density	Ranked 13th 91,492 0.8/km²
ISO 3166-2	CL-AI

Aysen (also spelled Aisén) is Chile's eleventh administrative region from north to south. It is the least populous of the thirteen regions. The shape of the landscape is marked by several glaciations that formed a lot of lakes, channels and fjords. The region still has icefields including the Northern Patagonian Ice Field and the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the world's largest after those in Antarctica and Greenland. Laguna San Rafael National Park, reachable only by boat or plane, is one of its most popular tourist destinations. Until the construction of Route 7 (the Carretera Austral, or Southern Highway) in the 1980s, the only overland routes from north to south through the region were extremely primitive tracks.

[edit] Etymology

The name Aysen may come from the Huilliche word "Achen," meaning "to crumble". Another theory suggests that it was a term used by the Chonos culture meaning "going more to the interior," in reference to the Fjord of Aysen that stretches east from the Moraleda strait.

During the 1990s, it was suggested that the name might be derived from an 1831 map made by captain Robert Fitz-Roy, who made an expedition to the coast onboard the Beagle with Charles Darwin and labeled the area around modern Aysen province with the words "Ice End." This theory, however, was largely dismissed because the name "Aysen" appears in documents of the explorer Father Garcia, who make an expedition to this region in 1766, more than 60 years prior to the arrival of the Beagle. Despite this, the Fitz-Roy myth has become popular among the many European tourists who visit Patagonia each year.