The Pan-American Highway is less a road than a 30,000-mile-long spiderweb. Its threads run through 14 countries, from the United States to Argentina. But there’s a 100-mile chunk missing through the border of Panama and Colombia; here, the mountainous jungle terrain is too rugged to be paved.
There is ongoing consideration to build one—connecting Yaviza, Panama to Turbo, Colombia—but it faces steadfast concern that a break in the rainforest would affect Panama’s annual rainfall, putting the Panama Canal (and the country’s economy) at risk. Plus, the jungle is a barrier against drug trafficking and from certain illness reaching North America. The region, known as the Darién Gap, is where the Emberá tribe lives.
The Emberá are an indigenous group native to the Darién Gap, which is comprised of the Choco department in Colombia and the Darién Province in Panama. After the Spanish invasion, they spread west to the jungles near what would eventually become Panama City.
It was here, on the bank of Lake Alajuela in Salamanca, that a dugout canoe picked me up for lunch.
No need to mess with the forest of darien. a satelite photo of the yaviza area shows that a 30 Km tunnel will get under the hills of the Panama-Colombia border. 30 km is doable since there are many tunnels over 50 KM in lenght, google world’s longest tunnels and you will see. The connecion of the northern and southern panamerican highway will turn all of panama into a land canal for commercial traffic between north and south america, bringing prosperity to the whole country and not only to the capital region as it is now.