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America and South America are widely
considered to be completely separate
continents but they are technically
connected by land to one another across
the narrow isthmus of panama which has
led some people to consider the Americas
together as a single giant continent for
thousands of years now people have been
walking across the Isthmus of Panama
between the two halves of America but
contrary to what you might think if you
live in the US or Canada today and you
type in directions to Buenos Aires in
Google Maps you'll just end up getting
an error message in fact you'll get an
error message if you type in directions
to anywhere in South America because
it's currently impossible to actually
drive there despite it being actually
connected by land the only way that
North Americans and South Americans can
visit one another currently is by air or
by sea and the reason why that's the
case is all because of this tiny little
piece of land here called the Darien Gap
allow me to explain why Europe Africa
and Asia are similar to the Americas and
that they're each considered separate
continents despite them all being
connected with one another by land
however you can actually drive between
all three of these continents and that's
been possible for a long time while it's
never been possible in the Americas
there are 22 sovereign nations that
exist in the Americas that are all
connected with one another by land so in
the early 20th century a movement began
forming to build a system of highways
that would connect all 22 of these
nations together for the first time and
allow people and goods to be driven
across them over a period of decades
that system of highways was constructed
and became known as the pan-american
highway but like an annoying computer
update it's been stuck in 99% completion
for decades now in its 99% complete form
today the highway starts at the furthest
northern point in Alaska Prudhoe Bay on
the Arctic Ocean and stretches all the
way down through 14 countries with
branches extending out across both
continents before arriving at woohoo
aiya the southernmost major city in
South America the 1% of the highway that
isn't finished though is
probably at the most critical possible
point here on the border between Panama
and Colombia the highway stretches all
the way from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska and
abruptly ends here at U visa Panama
while on the other side it stretches all
the way from via Argentina and stretches
all the way up before ending here at
turbo Colombia the so-called darién gap
in between a visa and turbo is only 100
kilometres wide as the crow flies and as
a result there are no roads that connect
Panama with Colombia which means that
it's currently also impossible to drive
between North America and South America
you'd think that building a highway
across just 100 kilometers of land would
be fairly easy though so why hasn't this
happened well it's mostly because this
100 kilometer stretch of land isn't it
aureus ly difficult to develop anything
on for starters the entire gap is
covered with incredibly thick rain
forests jungles swamps and mountains
which are all incredibly detrimental to
road construction and transportation in
order for me to put into perspective how
massively difficult this terrain
actually is to traverse across allow me
to tell you about the first people who
successfully managed to drive through
the gap entirely over land they used a
CJ Jeep Wrangler in 1985 to travel 201
kilometres across the jungle and it took
them seven hundred and forty-one days to
get across to the other side meaning
that on average they were only capable
of driving 270 meters per day through
the jungle there's also loads of
terrible tropical diseases here that
make working through the jungle a
nightmare for construction workers
consider the construction of the Panama
Canal a little over a century ago in the
same general vicinity of the Darien Gap
28,000 workers died here in Panama
constructing the canal due to tropical
diseases and over 12,000 more workers
died back in the 1850s and 60s
constructing the canals precursor the
Panama railway building anything through
here is inherently dangerous difficult
and immensely expensive because of the
region's terribly rugged geography but
that's not entirely the only reason wire
road hasn't ever been built here
expensive road
have been built across even harsher
environments before but here on the
Panama Colombia border there's a lot of
political resistance to building a road
that connects the two countries as well
for starters on this point
foot-and-mouth disease is still a common
ailment among cattle in South America
but it's been completely eradicated in
Central and North America ever since the
1950s there's a lot of evidence to
suggest that the absence of any roads or
paths across the darién gap has
prevented infected South American cows
from moving and spreading the disease
into North America so a lot of cattle
ranchers and farmers in the various
countries up here are pretty opposed to
building the road further there is
massive resistance amongst several
indigenous peoples that live in the area
of the Darien Gap who believe that a
highway built through their lands will
disrupt or even ruin their way of life
but the biggest problem that any
potential highway here faces is the
massive local environmental damage that
it will cause to a delicate ecosystem
the Darien Gap is a pristine and almost
untouched wildlife area at present-day
and the construction of a massive
intercontinental highway right through
the middle of it will obviously disrupt
that a highway did technically go into
construction once in 1971 and then again
in 1992 but it was killed both times by
damming environmental damage reports
however there have been some ideas
peddled around the would mitigate this
one idea is to simply extend the already
existing pan-american highway from
u-visa in Panama out to the Caribbean
coast through the less delicate
ecosystems and establish a ferry link
with a row network over in Colombia
another idea is to simply build giant
bridges across the portions of the
Darien Gap that are considered to be the
most delicate
either way building a regular highway
through the whole gap would not only be
environmentally destructive and
dangerous for workers but it would also
be dangerous for people driving through
even after it's completed because the
whole area is a hotbed for drug
traffickers and insurgent groups in 2013
a Swedish backpacker walking through the
gap was kidnapped by FARC
revolutionaries and executed on the
basis that he was a foreign spy in 2003
three journalists operating in the gap
were kidnapped by far-right
revolutionaries so kidnappings and
killings like these are relatively
common occurrences inside of the darién
gap owing to how remote and difficult it
is to actually get inside there and
driving through on a highway would
likely remain a perilous journey for all
of these reasons it's highly likely that
the Darien Gap will remain a gap in the
pan-american highway system for quite
some time and there's not much that you
can probably ever do to change that
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