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The Darién Gap

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Re: The Darién Gap

#41

Post by honorious »

xdfil wrote: post #4

This guy claims to have ridden his bike from Alaska to Argentina and doesn't even mention crossing the gap. https://explorersweb.com/teen-cycles-alaska-argentina/ I thought the story was problematic the moment I heard it. I met someone who crossed the gap while migrating to the United States from Africa. When I asked what they thought about someone riding a bicycle through it, they shook their head. They said even ca…

No need to doubt his story. Very likely he took a boat, like many touring cyclist doing the Pan-American route do. It is a relatively established route.

If you really want to be self-reliant, the amazing Iohan Gueorguiev bike-raft it, but that's quite on the extreme side.

Re: The Darién Gap

#42

Post by PUSH_AX »

xdfil wrote: post #4

This guy claims to have ridden his bike from Alaska to Argentina and doesn't even mention crossing the gap. https://explorersweb.com/teen-cycles-alaska-argentina/ I thought the story was problematic the moment I heard it. I met someone who crossed the gap while migrating to the United States from Africa. When I asked what they thought about someone riding a bicycle through it, they shook their head. They said even ca…

Most likely took a boat past that area.

Re: The Darién Gap

#43

Post by lsllc »

andrewjf wrote: post #8
urbandw311er wrote: post #3

I’ve always been fascinated by the Darien gap. There’s a TV show here in the Uk called “race across the world” and in last season they had to cross the gap. Was really hoping for racing jeeps and armed militia but sadly (and sensibly) they took a boat.

May I recommend “long way up” as well (although they also took a boat). They travel from Ushuaia to Canada, and talked about the Darién Gap, I don’t recall how in depth.

Seconded. Long Way Up is entertaining, interesting and has some incredible cinematography. It's also great that Ewan and Charlie rode all-electric Harleys and the crew had pre-production Rivian's (the with the very first 2 Rivian "production" VINs).

BTW: It was actually Ushuaia to LA, not Canada.

Re: The Darién Gap

#44

Post by PanamaNewb »

sungam wrote: post #34
PanamaNewb wrote: post #32

Hey there. I'm from Panama. The Darien Gap still has foreigners (including wealthy tourists) going there with the crazy idea they can hike through it. The trash being left behind in just the past couple years is just heartbreaking. Mountainous jungles in Panama are extremely easy to get lost in the overgrown vegetation. Tourists have died in hiking trails in Boquete, Veraguas or Cerro Azul by only going a few hundred…

Sounds like an incredibly risky area but in terms of navigation can they not use gps?

For sure, a garmin gps would help. They're not 100% though. I have a property in the mountains with jungle and there were steep drops that did not show up on my topographic map. I imagine someone could easily die if they didn't pay attention.

Also, slipping and falling is a serious risk during the wet season, even on well known paths.

Re: The Darién Gap

#45

Post by Swizec »

sungam wrote: post #34
PanamaNewb wrote: post #32

Hey there. I'm from Panama. The Darien Gap still has foreigners (including wealthy tourists) going there with the crazy idea they can hike through it. The trash being left behind in just the past couple years is just heartbreaking. Mountainous jungles in Panama are extremely easy to get lost in the overgrown vegetation. Tourists have died in hiking trails in Boquete, Veraguas or Cerro Azul by only going a few hundred…

Sounds like an incredibly risky area but in terms of navigation can they not use gps?

GPS often fails in dense cities with tall buildings. Also in mountainous areas with sharp terrain like the Julian Alps.

I imagine a dense jungle could pose similar challenges. If nothing else, a gps won’t help if you can’t find a route to where it’s telling you to go because the jungle/river/valley is impassable.

Re: The Darién Gap

#46

Post by PanamaNewb »

kortilla wrote: post #38
PanamaNewb wrote: post #32

Hey there. I'm from Panama. The Darien Gap still has foreigners (including wealthy tourists) going there with the crazy idea they can hike through it. The trash being left behind in just the past couple years is just heartbreaking. Mountainous jungles in Panama are extremely easy to get lost in the overgrown vegetation. Tourists have died in hiking trails in Boquete, Veraguas or Cerro Azul by only going a few hundred…

How much of it is about preserving jungles and how much is about keeping Colombians out? From the article yesterday about the failed pan American highway due to the Darien gap, it pointed out that Colombia and Panama are the only two neighboring countries in the world without a road between them. It also explicitly stated that many citizens support that to reduce undocumented immigrants from Colombia.

Before the recent waves of Venezuelan immigrants, most discussions I've seen about the topic was related to preserving the jungle, but some people for sure made snarky comments about keeping colombian gangsters out.

Nowadays, most of the attention are definitely on the Venezuelan immigrants that come to Panama without much money or much of a plan.

But if the government signed a deal to construct a highway, I predict it would be mostly environmentalists protesting in the street than xenophobes.

Re: The Darién Gap

#47

Post by OfSanguineFire »

my12parsecs wrote: post #14
bogota wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like recently that hasn’t been the case as the economic situation in South America continues to worsen more people are crossing on foot. Strange to be downvoted for pointing out the stats on the linked wiki article.

I wonder whether the Darien Gap or the US-Mexico border (and surrounding deserts) is more dangerous to cross illegally.

The US–Mexico border is so long and varied, danger is going to vary significantly. I cycled the Baja Divide cycling route, which starts from San Diego and goes through the nearby Otay Mountain wilderness reserve before reaching the Mexican border. The trails around Otay are littered with backpacks dropped by migrants, and when I asked a CBP officer parked in his car monitoring the area, he said that patrols were only partly successful and aliens were constantly getting through. It’s just a few km of walking before a migrant will hit a paved road where a prearranged contact can pick him up. Compared to descriptions of crossing the desert farther east, this seemed pretty safe, with the main risk the waste of days and months if one is caught by Mexican or US authorities.

Re: The Darién Gap

#48

Post by baq »

kortilla wrote: post #40
hermitcrab wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be a triumph of engineering culture to pave over the whole world?

No. There is a clear demand for a route here that has not been met. There is no demand for paving over the world.

Well, there’s also clear demand for not having any paved route through there.

Re: The Darién Gap

#49

Post by jpcfl »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #37
jpcfl wrote: post #28

I know several people who have made the foot journey across the Darién, and have heard many horror stories about it. When I was in Bogotá last year, I met a Venezuelan man selling art painted on Bolivares. Inflation is so bad in Venezuela that Bolivares are practically worthless as currency. (There's also a beautiful irony that painting a picture of Che Guevara on a Bolivar makes it more valuable.) Many of his pieces…

> When I was in Bogotá last year, I met a Venezuelan man selling art ... Many of his pieces were portraits of people who crossed the Darién fleeing Venezuela. Maybe I'm missing something. Folks are fleeing Venezuela. They pass thru Columbia and crossed the Darién into Panama. How did the guy in Bogotá meet people who crossed the Darién? Edit: Never mind. I think you meant: portraits of people who were going to cross…

I don't think he met any of the people in the portraits personally. He said he learned of these people and their stories through social media, at least the ones we talked about.

Re: The Darién Gap

#50

Post by OfSanguineFire »

jddj wrote: post #21

Random related anecdote. I met a guy in Colombia who was cycling from Canada to Patagonia. He'd made it all the way to the border according to his maps but was stopped by armed military/paramilitary troops and sent back to Panama by river in a dinghy full of (or made to appear to be full of) bananas. In the end he had to fly that leg. It's also common to sail it, Panama city to Cartagena, but the other direction make…

Quite a few cyclists and thru-hikers have crossed in recent years. The hassle with the authorities is mainly on the Colombian side, regularizing one’s status there, since the Colombian authorities consider one to have entered the country illegally. Those who get sent back on the Panamanian side generally do so because they look embarrassingly badly prepared.
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