Recently, we mentioned the lack of an existence of a road through the Panamanian isthmus, connecting North America to South America. When did we mention this? Not important. Please. Don’t bring that back up.
We mentioned the lack of the road, and we didn’t say a whole lot else. Because we didn’t know a whole lot else. Then, we went and learned.
It turns out that this stretch of Panama is called the Darién Gap, and it extends into Colombia, and the reason no roads have been built over it seems to be that people are worried North American cows will get sick? No joke. From Wikipedia:
“Efforts were made for decades to remedy this missing link in the Pan-American Highway. Planning began in 1971 with the help of American funding, but this was halted in 1974 after concerns were raised by environmentalists. US support was further blocked by the US Department of Agriculture in 1978, from its desire to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. Another effort to build the road began in 1992, but by 1994 a United Nations agency reported that the road, and the subsequent development, would cause extensive environmental damage. Cited reasons include evidence that the Darién Gap has prevented the spread of diseased cattle into Central and North America, which have not seen foot-and-mouth disease since 1954.”
You want to stop a road getting built, you get all the cows on one side of it sick with something to which the cows on the other side have no immunity. That’s the rule, and it’s a good one.
Still, I guess people do hike across it. It’s dangerous, being a lawless jungle and all, but people walk it sometimes, either out of adventure or out of mortal terror (there’s a little bit of a horseshoe effect going on there with safety, I think). There’s a guy who’s been trying since 1998 to walk from Chile to England and his biggest problem has been neither the Darién Gap nor the Bering Strait, but Russian visa problems. You can cross 66 miles of jungle on foot, but you can’t get past Russia’s immigration police. That’s the rule, and it’s pretty surprising.
Are there rivers that cross the Darién Gap? I don’t think so. I think it’s got a continental divide, just like the rest of us. That’s why we had to dig the canal, you know? But then again, I guess rivers aren’t consistent. Unless we make them consistent. I had a bunch of people shout that at me in the comments on TikTok once. There are evidently mountains in the Darién Gap. Big ones. Ones twice as tall as the biggest in England. Also, some indigenous people live there. They are of less importance to those who decide whether or not to build rows than the cows. Not to me, of course. I love cows, but people? Really love people. Want to get that on the record here. I wonder if the indigenous people (sorry, people of indigenousness) ever see the hikers going by. I bet they do. But I bet there are stretches where they tell the hikers they’re on their own.
