Buenos Aires/General Carrera Lake

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The Buenos Aires or General Carrera is a lake located in Patagonia and shared by Argentina, where is known as Lago Buenos Aires, and Chile, where its called Lago General Carrera. Both names are internationally accepted.

The lake has a surface of 1,850 km² of which 970 km² are in the Chilean Aysen Region, and 880 km² to the Argentine Santa Cruz Province, which makes it the biggest lake in Chile, and the fourth largest in Argentina. In its Western basin, Lake Gen. Carrera has 586 m maximum depth (Murdie et al. 1999, Geo-Marine Letters 18:315-320).

The lake is of glacial origin and is surrounded by the Andes mountain range. The lake drains to the Pacific Ocean on the west through the Baker River. However, there's also an intermittent stream from the lake that heads east called Fénix Chico, which joins the Deseado River, and eventually reaches the Atlantic Ocean.

The weather in this area of Chile and Argentina is generally cold and humid. But the lake itself has a sunny microclimate, a weather pattern enjoyed by the few settlements along the lake, such as Puerto Ingeniero Ibáñez and Chile Chico in Chile, and Los Antiguos and Perito Moreno in Argentina.

The area near the coast of the lake was first inhabited by criollos and European immigrants between 1900 and 1925. In 1971 and 1991, eruptions of the Hudson Volcano severely affected the local economy, especially that of sheep farming.

The Argentine side of the lake is relatively easy to access, through strip of plains that was first used by the Tehuelches, and then by explorer Francisco Moreno. The National Route 40, created in the 1920s, also makes uses of it. The Chilean side of the lake has been mostly isolated, and was for years accessed through Argentina, until the creation in the 1990s of the Carretera Austral, which connected it to the rest of Chile, and permitted the expansion of tourism in the area.