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Comment by PanamaNewb | Hacker News Reader

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 meters off path.

Also, most Panamanians are against the idea of building a road between Darien and Colombia since most of us want to preserve as much jungle as we still can.

There is currently massive protests against the mining operation in Donoso by the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals (FQM). I imagine there would be similar blockades against foreign companies trying to build a road in the darien gap.

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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.

One big reason why there is no road is to prevent the introduction of foot and mouth disease in Central and North American cattle and horses.

Also, man-eating parasites known as screwworms.

Interestingly, reading this thread has made me realise that roads more-often-than-not are a path for exploitation (equally as you might describe them as a path for opportunity).

Without roads, you cannot build mines or forestries within the area to extract the resources from the land. Just interesting because I've never thought about roads in this way.

Feels like not building roads is a good thing if preserving the land is the intention.

The US Forest Service agrees with you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadless_area_conservation

On that topic here's an interesting article about the Ambler Mining District in Alaska - massive mineral deposits that would require a road through pristine wilderness to access:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-27/ambler-ac...

and

https://archive.ph/WP14Q

Guyana and Venezuela are two neighboring countries and they have no roads crossing their common border.

Same context: a thick jungle.

Desperate people trying to escape brutal regimes are one thing but rich tourists are just asking to become victims of DG bandits.

> are extremely easy to get lost

Notably and tragically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_of_Kris_Kremers_and_Lis...

(though this was at the other end of Panama)

I was in panama when i was young, about 17 years ago. I always wanted to come back and had the idea of building startups there that help local economy. How is the landscape there now? Is there a startup scene?

I love panama and hope to return some day. Always excited to hear from panmeños!

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.

Surely lidar would be valuable, given how it has already proven its effectiveness for archaeology in this region

How is this a response to that comment? What does LiDAR have to do with hikers using a GPS?

More precise topographic charts, I guess.

> there were steep drops that did not show up on my topographic map

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.

GPS can tell you exactly where you are, and nothing more. It can’t tell anyone else where you are, it can’t teach you to read a map if you don’t have the skills. It can’t tell you the best route through dense jungle terrain if you don’t have the skillset.

But it should be able to point you back to the hiking path, or retrace your steps backwards, as long as it's connected to mapping app.

Just because it can't do everything doesn't mean it can't do anything.

I suspect there's also not much demand for a road between them.

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