Darien Gap: The Most Dangerous (Absence of a) Road

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/09/darien-gap-most-dangerous-absence-of.html

by geekfactor • 13 years ago

107 45 13 years ago

exue• 13 years ago

Tangentially, Road Fever is a pretty epic read about two roadtrippers who get from the Tierra del Fuego, Argentina to Prudhoe, Alaska, in 24 days. Border crossings, mechanical issues, weather, the Darien Gap, all covered. (They took a ferry I think). Looking at the pictures and the intensity, 90km has to feel like an eternity on actual land

idProQuo• 13 years ago

I believe you mean 90 megameters.

na852• 13 years ago

I don't believe he does mean 90 million kilometers (a tenth of the circumference of earth's orbit around the sun)

umami• 13 years ago

The crossing of the Darien Gap is about 90 kilometers (from the article). I assume @exue was referring to that part.

tibbon• 13 years ago

Interesting. I was under the (wrong) impression that you could drive or motorcycle from South America to North America. Seems all but impossible.

001sky• 13 years ago

People do it all the time, just with the help of a boat across this obstacle. Given the scale of the journey, its often not "footnoted" in many casual references. For scale, the Pan-American-Highway, which basically navigates from Alaska to Patagonia is about 48,000 kilometres (30,000 mi) in total length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_Highway

jorgem• 13 years ago

Yeah, my bucketlist is going to need to be modified slightly to account for this. I think it has always been: "Drive to Argentina from Los Angeles". I think it's ok to put the car on a boat for part of the trip. :)

crdoconnor• 13 years ago

You can get a yacht from Panama to Cartagena in Colombia. That seems to be the only way.

A lot of motorcyclists use this route.

hdevalence• 13 years ago

As a historical anecdote, this was also the site of the Darien Disaster in the late 1690s: the plan was to build a Scottish colony, but it didn't go well. It went so poorly, in fact, that Scotland went broke and had to get a bailout from England, leading to the Acts of Union in 1707.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme

pelle2• 13 years ago

In the old days the Darien encompassed a lot larger area than it does today.

The Darien Scheme was actually in the San Blas islands now part of the Kuna Yala territory belonging to the Kuna tribe. This territory lies further west that the Darien province of today.

But yes it is an interesting story that I always bring up to Scots.

makomk• 13 years ago

Yeah, and now Scotland is seeking independence again - but they still expect England (or at least the Bank of England) to be on the hook to bail them out.

JetSetWilly2• 13 years ago

Neither of those assertions are true.

Only if there is a yes vote returned in the referendum will it be possible to say that "Scotland is seeking independence" - at the moment the most that can be said is some Scots are seeking independence.

Secondly, the white paper released yesterday does not suggest that England (by which you rather arrogantly mean the rest of the UK presumably) be liable to pay any Scottish debts incurred after independence.

So get that chip off your shoulder.

arethuza• 13 years ago

Ironically, the organisation set up to handle the bailout part of the Union evolved into what became RBS:

http://www.rbs.com/content/otr/content/curriculum-for-excell...

Edit: An excellent book on the subject on the long rise and quick fall of RBS is "Making it Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy" -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Happen-Goodwin-British-Econom...

nacho2sweet• 13 years ago

One of my best friends and old roommate tried to walk this from Panama to Columbia in his "party shirt" (dress shirt covered in puke and blood). Gave up after 3 days because he couldn't cross certain streams/rivers, where the map he had said there would be bridges and the water was too high. Paid a guy going past in a boat to take him to Columbia. They had to stop 6 hours in a long the way in some town in the middle of the jungle were he got picked up by Panama military.

They questioned him for hours (they don't want dumb white kids in there) and then brought him back out the Panama side, revoked his visa, and told him to get out of the country. It is also a cool place for FARC and major cocaine traffickers to do business.

My favourite part of the story was they went through his backpack and were really concerned he was traveling with a girl or someone else because it had luchador masks from Mexico and tight pink underwear my girlfriend who worked at American Apparel gave him, but not much else.

He said being in the jungle there was pretty frustrating and terrible. Like everything moved, and it was sweaty and hot, and you couldn't get a break from it and just cool down. Also Howler Monkeys!

tincholio• 13 years ago

Panama to Columbia

ColOmbia

sparktree• 13 years ago

get out of my head!

sharkweek• 13 years ago

One of my best college friends and I decided we were going to adventure the entire stretch of South America, through Central America and then up the PCT over the course of about 6-7 months via bus and motorcycle (ended up not doing the PCT because we ran out of money).

We get into Ecuador thinking just a few short bus rides (http://i.imgur.com/kVVqZuX.jpg) will have us through Columbia and at the border of Panama.

We got our asses laughed at so hard when we were asking about how to get through this "weird jungle area" -- asking the dumbest questions like "where are the roads?" "how about hiking trails"

Lesson learned and ended up just flying over it. But highly recommend traveling that area of the world if you ever get a chance. Some absolutely gorgeous areas, and I think it's still relatively under-appreciated

Nursie2• 13 years ago

I had a plan to do something similar - motorcycle up the pan-american highway. Unfortunately every time I think I have a friend or two sold on the idea they drop out...

Last time it got as far as the planning phase and the Darien Gap came up, and there was a real moment of "WTF? There actually is no road between Central and South America? How can there not be a road?"

It was only a few months after I'd completed a driving circuit of the Australian coastline and I'd assumed if there were roads there then there would be roads everywhere...

I'd still like to go to South America, but the tales of kidnappings in remote areas do still stay my hand.

coldtea3• 13 years ago

I had a plan to do something similar - motorcycle up the pan-american highway. Unfortunately every time I think I have a friend or two sold on the idea they drop out...

Just go do it. You'll make some friends on the way...

rockyleal• 13 years ago

One more lesson? It's not spelled "Columbia", that is the name of a city in the US. If you are referring to the South American nation it is "Colombia". With an O.

twocommas• 13 years ago

Darien Gap: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darién_Gap

exit• 13 years ago

redirecting to a broken mobile page is idiotic.

freehunter• 13 years ago

Especially when I have my browser set to request the desktop site. There's literally no way for me to find this article using my phone.

mptwomey• 13 years ago

Think of making a road trip to South America in 1961, as the subjects of my documentary did. They knew better than to try to penetrate the Darien Jungle -- that's why they went in a surplus Army Duck. Unfortunately, the DUKW (which was designed for a ship-to-shore dip like at Normandy) wasn't up to the seafaring in store, and they ended up marooned in that very jungle. Check out here for more: www.facebook.com/TheDuckDiaries

vpeters25• 13 years ago

I wonder if they have thought of making the road go around north-east to Acandi and then connect with Hw 62 around Chigorodo. It won't be as direct but it would avoid the environmental issues of cutting through the Darien National Park.

pelle2• 13 years ago

A popular way is via yacht to Cartagena as someone mentioned. It will skip a bunch of beautiful countryside though.

Less well known are the small villages along both sides of the coast.

On the Caribbean side there is a small town called Capurgana on the Colombian side with a few nice hotels that offer hikes to the village La Miel on the Panamanian side. So it is possible to cross the border there quite safely by foot.

http://www.brendansadventures.com/paradise-found-la-miel-pan...

The area looks beautiful. Since I first of heard of this it's been on my bucket list.

That still leaves you with the question on how to get there without flying. The hotels in Capurgana offer boat rides to Turbo in Antioquia where there are good roads south.

While I know Panama well I was actually surprised to learn from Colombian TV of the villages on the Panamanian side. I nor most of my Panamanian friends had never heard of these.

So your best bet would probably be to go by boat along the coast from either one of the San Blas islands or more likely Isla Verde a bit further west.

anon4• 13 years ago

Guerrilla is not a type of person, it's a type of war. A "little war" to be exact. The person fighting in a guerrilla is a guerrilla soldier or a guerrilla fighter. Also, it's pronounced geriya (with a hard g and a rolling r), not gorilla.

pcmonk• 13 years ago

Except that, in English, it's actually pronounced very similar to gorilla (the vowels may be slightly different, but the r and l sounds are normal English). I speak Spanish, and I'm aware that's how you say it in Spanish, but that's not how you say it in English. If you want to say it that way, that's not a problem, but that's not the standard English way to say it.

Incidentally, the same applies to the meaning as well: In English, we use guerrilla as an adjective, and it can apply to either the war or the soldiers ("guerrillero", if you prefer). Adjectives can also be used substantively, so "guerrilla" on its own is usually used to mean a guerrila soldier. I recognize this is different from its usage in Spanish.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy

coldtea3• 13 years ago

It's not even metonymy proper.

It's the adoption of a spanish word in another language, in which it IS used as a noun in the first place.

clamour• 13 years ago

That's weird, because searching "guerrillas" (an unambiguously nominal form of the word) in the Corpus of Contemporary English (COCA) gives me over two thousand hits!

http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/

And the Oxford dictionary defines "guerrilla" as

a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces

and gives the IPA pronunciation as /gəˈrIlə/ AKA "gorilla".

It's almost like language evolves, and borrowed words don't always retain their pronunciations... no, it couldn't be...

coldtea3• 13 years ago

You'd be surprised:

Guerrilla, noun a member of a band of irregular soldiers that uses guerrilla warfare, harassing the enemy by surprise raids, sabotaging communication and supply lines, etc.

Just because a word is written like in your language and/or is derrived from it, doesn't mean it's meant to be read as belonging IN your language.

martingoodson• 13 years ago

Just back from Colombia. A swedish tourist tried to cross the Darien Gap in May. His last blog post is here: http://centramerica.wordpress.com/

"I’m in riosucio now, on the atrato river. From here it’s not far from panama. There are supposedly quite many paths from here to panama. We’ll see how it goes."

He hasn't been heard from since. Read the comments on his blog if you want to feel like crying.

EStudley• 13 years ago

Wow, those comments really do hit home. I would think he would have a satellite phone or something. Really chilling.

webjames• 13 years ago

chilling indeed.

More here: http://colombiareports.co/swedish-tourist-missing-in-northwe...

http://www.panama-guide.com/article.php/20130708131957815

jasonkester• 13 years ago

I did the "Yacht Route" that a bunch of people here are talking about. Well worth it!

We had backpacked North from Peru and ran out of North in Cartagena, so we headed down to the local yacht club to see what we could find out. As luck would have it, there was a woman standing on the dock chatting to some friends. She was single-handed, heading to Panama in about a month, and didn't like the idea of doing the overnight journey without a crew.

The only downside? "Well, I'm not going straight in to Colon. I was planning to spend a few weeks sailing around the San Blas islands first. Would you be OK with that?"

Uh... I guess.

The San Blas are amazing. There's absolutely no way to visit the place if you don't have your own boat. There are no hotels. The locals won't let you sleep on the islands or let non-Kuna run tours there. But for something like $5/month (depending on the local village) you can moor your yacht anywhere you want. Just don't take any coconuts off the islands.

Most of the islands are completely unpopulated, of the white-sand & palm tree variety that you think of when you think South Pacific tropical paradise. The locals clump together on just a few islands, with ridiculously dense concentrations of thatch huts piled on top of one another and overhanging the sea. 200 yards away might be yet another tropical paradise, but they'd prefer to be next to one another, so you can have that one to yourself if you'd like.

They have little shops (and solar powered cell towers supplied by the government), and they'll row their dugouts out to your yacht in the morning to sell you Kuna bread and fresh fruit.

All in, we spent 5 weeks on the boat. It was rather pleasant. Enough so that I often find myself pricing yachts online when I look back on the experience.

GFischer• 13 years ago

You can rent a yatch, no need to own :) (though it's nice - but yatchs are costly to maintain!).

One of my uncles rented a yatch to sail on northern Australia (the Whitsunday islands), from his description, it sounds amazing (much like you described, white sandy beaches, awesome weather, nice sailing). He does own a yatch and a sailing license back home though, I think at least the designated captain must have a license.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitsunday_Islands

Edit: remember the quote "A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money"

josephlord• 13 years ago

The other aphorism about boat ownership is something like "the two happiest days are the day you buy it and the day you sell it".

lancewiggs• 13 years ago

I motorcycled North and South America from 2001-2003. It was fairly simple, and cheap, to fly from Panama City to Quito, via Bogata. The yacht technique was the source of quite a few bad stories, while Colon, the step off point from Panama, was awful. I had to build my own motorbike box, but some others had theirs done for them. These days the number of riders is huge, and the process for flying should be very well covered in the adventure motorcycle sites like horizonsunlimited.com.

I did get to ride on a yacht through the canal - and that was amazing.

allard• 13 years ago

see http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/22/130422fa_fact_sm... too

Darien Gap: The Most Dangerous (Absence of a) Road

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