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The Darién Province is the stretch
of land that joins the North and South American
continents. The Interamaricana highway ends
at Yaviza, which is literally the end of
the road. The Darién Gap is the 150km
wide area between Yaviza and Colombia, where
the roads begins again. We knew the Darién
was "extremely" dangerous, but
we had also heard that there was lots of
mud and technical off-roading. Surprisingly,
the Darién turned out to be the exact
opposite of what we expected.
The first police check point was the most
rigorous on the trip to the Darien. They
demanded to see our original passports as
well as copies. They kept the copies, asked
where we were going and for how long. By
the time we finished, it was getting dark
so we parked in front of the police station
in a small village full of Kunas. We were
their entertainment for the night. Everybody
in the village came over to the trucks to
see the gringos. The men said "buenos
noches", the women just watched, and
the children investigated all of our camping
gadgets. The Kuna kids loved our colapsable
chairs and table. They piled in with big
grins.
The next morning we chewed dust for over
150 km on a wide dirt road. After a nine
more police check points (above left), we
realized that the police from the first
check point had called every other check
point, so they were all expecting us along
the way. We felt pretty safe, considering
the fact they probablywould have sent out
a rescue team had we missed any check point.
We envisioned deep, dark, thick forest,
and only saw logging trucks and vast pastures
for grazing cows. The end of the road was
even less eventful, as the road ended in
a bus turn-around besides a river. After
a few minutes of arriving in Yaviza, we
turned around and drove back through the
dusty road until Meteti, where we ended
up camping for the night. When we asked
Manuel where we could camp in the area,
he invited us to stay the night at his house.
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