Six Central American countries in three weeks
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama The Pan-American Highway stretches an almost unbroken 30,000 kilometres from Prudhoe Bay in north-western Alaska to Ushuaia in Patagonian Argentina. Over the next three weeks, our journey will cover only a 2,000km section of this, through six different countries, albeit travelling further on the ground as we zigzag from coast to coast. The "almost" is the notorious 105 k m Darien Gap on the border between eastern Panama and Colombia, where completely impenetrable jungle is home to indigenous tribes and narco-traffickers. Our journey begins with 480 kilometres by highway bus from Panama City to David. But before that,the City itself. A couple of hundred kilometers west of Darien but a world away culturally. Facing out onto a broad bay in the Pacific with the queue of ships waiting for the entrance to the canal to the western end, Panama bakes in tropical heat beneath a sky full of Frigate birds and a million migrating black-headed vulture...