No al asphalto
 

'They should really put a road in.'

Yah - and a guard rail. With adverts. And maybe a viewing platform gift shop. And a McDarien branded rest-stop. That's what they should really do.

These Dutchies are obviously ****ing nuts, but Allah takes care of the fools. Good luck to 'em.

Suerte, Dan Walsh

Dan, I half agree with that comment, but the other side of the coin is, that as i understand it , there have been people wanting to put a road in there for years but are under U.S. pressure and influence not to.

What would be a great help to many south american export economies also means a very easy drug smuggling route straight to the largest cocaine market in the world!!

I'm sure everyone can draw their own conclusion from that.

As for the attempt on "the Gap", crazy but good look to them.

cheers
mike
(soon to be in Cali, with supposedly the best women in Colombia - can't wait!)

;Quote;These Dutchies are obviously ****ing nuts, but Allah takes care of the fools. Good luck to 'em.


If Henno shows the same determination crossing the Darien as he did in finishing the 2006 Dakar on his XT500 then he'll have NO problem. After all he survived Senegal the Ar*ehole of the world with piles...Good luck

Damp Dutch Nuts
 

re the road - maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'd hate to see one of the world's last great wildernesses tarmaced and tamed. Fortunately, it's not gonna happen anytime soon - the Colombians are keen but the Panamanians like their natural buffer zone.

re - the Dutchies. 'Kin nuts' is a compliment. I've got nothing but respect for these fellas. But as others have already said on this thread, the Darien Gap isn't a technical enduro ride - it's a more-water-than-land jungle swamp populated by very dangerous men who have previously kidnapped and murdered intrusive foreigners. Which is why we're all wishing them luck.

Finally, Senegal, arsehole of the world? Really? I loved the place - great people, crazy capital, charming towns, quiet beaches and the finale for the world's greatest race. Potato, potarto.

Suerte, Dan Walsh

Build the road, hurry everything up, got change for the new World Dollar?, make it all the same everywhere.......... :sad

Turbo
 

Latest entries from the lads -

darrien gap turbo

darrien gap cross river

Suerte, Dan

............."We cannot afford to wait longer, because it's already raining too much. We can get troubles with that"...............
They did not receive usable info on the routes through the Darrien Gap; the national park in the south is a close for people. And it is said that guerilla's have refuge there.............

There's an english summary of the Darien Gap on the site of Henno:
Henno's rally site : Henno van Bergeijk

Regards,

Dre39

darrien gap speedboat

I'm confused - have these fellas flown the bikes into Bogota from Holland, ridden to Turbo, then crossed the Darien in a speedboat while the bikes travel on a freighter? Does that count? Does that mean I can claim to have crossed the Darien Gap twice cause I've flown across it with my bike? Cool - I'm more adventurous than I thought.

I hope I'm wrong, but this is starting to smell like a Yamaha marketing stunt -
'They themselves found a speedboat equipped with two 200Bhp yamaha engines to bring them across...'

Suerte, Dan

bah humbug...
 

Any adventure where you're posting reports on the internet starts looking much less adventurous. What happened to traveling and being cut off from everything you know? You remember, when people used poste restante and you hoped you might get something in the mail three months from now??? No, I'm not showing my age as that was only 15 years ago...

Lorraine

I don't understand the freighter thing. Were the bikes really sent on to Panama?

Something must have changed or it's something we don't understand. Why else were ropes and winching type gear involved from the start?

AMC floated their Jeeps thru much of the way...way back when....before Upton did his crossings via land.

Ed....howdy, man...

I remember when there was no Internet.
The Pony Express riders had some strong horses.
It must have taken a while for Chris to learn that the King was pissed off.
Elephant turd tracks left in Spain were difficult to follow from what's now known as Syria.

Is it the publicitiy that bothers you?

hypocritical...
 

I shouldn't be too put off by the publicity aspect, since as an author myself, it seems necessary in order to survive. And don't get me wrong, I think what these guys are doing is great and I wish I was out there with them, crazy as that is. :-) But perhaps the real adventurers are the people doing the smuggling as they're out there ALL THE TIME.

Also, I think there's something that happens in your soul when you are cut off from your past/prior life. There's a growth that happens. For Aborigines, it's called walkabout. Other cultures have similar rites of passage. I see too many people tied to email and their blogs as they travel. Yes, that's their business and not mine, I agree...

Perhaps this is the first stages of aging, of mourning for the 'good ole days'. ;-)

Lorraine

Darien attempt
 

The English summary is not a very good one once you have read the original daily reports in Dutch.Poor quality translation is leaving a lot of detail out and confusing the English reader. Check out the more detailed Dutch versions by clicking on ¨nieuws¨ .-)
As about the ¨freigthter¨ --- from the Dutch version it seems clear that they put the bikes on a small wobbbly freight launch and then the boys had to travel on a dual - motor passenger launch , which in Dutch (!) they call a ¨speedboat¨ . , They crosssed some waterbody to get to a place called Capurgana , in Colombia yet ,at the edge of Katio National Park, 10km from the Panama border. Then they want to see about reaching the border and IF they can get across that then they intend to go into the jungle.
Hmmmmm..... a lot of ifs in there. Maybe they could have made a trial run by travelling from Maastricht to Harlingen on their bikes but NOT via any existing roads, bicycle paths, railway lines or existing bridges ..

As to the history behind the proposed Darien gap Highway , it is my understanding that when the Pan American Highway scheme was first thought up back when , in the ´40s or ´50s ? , the USA spoke to support construction and provided much, if not all of the funding through the poor CA countries. Hence all the nice steel truss bridges by the Chicago Bridge Company , or something like that. It also made transport of the military through there easier in the event of some shooting and coups needing US aid . Such civil wars resulted in the bombbing and destruction of most of those bridges in El Salvador, NIcaragua, a pity. . When it came to the Darien Gap section the US held back funding and construction because the cost was going to be too much as compared to the benefit , and it was considered prudent to leave it unbuilt to provide a natural buffer to prevent the northward spread of hoof and mouth disease, a big threat to the beef industry in CA,Mexico and USA. Not said but just as important it was also a good barrier to keep uncontrolled migration of people north in check before the days of mass air travel.
In recent years Panama has done ¨ environmental studies¨ and committed to completion of the last section of the highway on its own. Opposition to this is now , as I read things, provided mostly by environmental groups and human rights groups who wish to protect the last remaining areas of ¨unspoiled ¨ jungle and natural areas of the region and to protect the number of native tribes living as of old . Both these views do have merrit. Construction of the highway would mean opening up the formerly isolated countryside to the hordes of misinformed pioneers and settlers rushing out from the semi-urban slums wielding machetes, axes , chainsaws , gasoline and matches to set up their own little stake in the jungles and fulfill their ¨devine duty ¨ to overpopulate the land.The forests would soon be reduced to smouldering ruins covered in plastic garbage and streams running putrid with agua negra.

Update: darrien gap phone call

From maps I have, it looks as if they plan to travel W and SW from the Carib coast, and meet the road that runs south to Yaviza. They are now well north of Yaviza. It will be interesting to watch.

There may be more than one definition of "through the Darien Gap".