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The
Pan-American Highway
Simon Calder
At a whopping 15,000 miles, the
Pan-American Highway is the
world's longest thoroughfare.
And as Simon Calder discovers
when he undertakes the ultimate
road trip, it really goes the
distance
For Salvador Dali, Perpignan
railway station, in southern
France, was "le centre du
monde". Cuzco, in Peru, home of
the Incas, goes one better; its
name translates from Quechua as
"centre of the universe". Both
claims are wrong: the real hub
of the cosmos can be found just
outside Panama City.
My source for this revelation is
an ice-cream vendor who plies
his trade on Via España, the
main street of the Panamanian
capital. His barrow is decorated
with a painting of a bridge that
stretches across a waterway and
fades into the sunset. It
depicts the point, a few miles
west from here, at which the
Pan-American Highway crosses the
Panama Canal: where the world's
longest road meets the planet's
greatest short cut.
The accompanying slogan explains
the significance of the
location. This is, the passer-by
is informed, the "Puente del
Mundo - Corazon del Universo":
Bridge of the World - Heart of
the Universe. And to experience
the ultimate road trip, there is
no better destination. So, if
your trip ends at the most
alluring capital in the
Americas, where should you
begin? For balance, perhaps in
the ugliest capital city in
Christendom.
A walk through Managua sometimes
feels like trespassing on grief.
To understand this sorry state
of a city, you need to
understand the catastrophes that
have befallen it. Nicaragua's
capital was carelessly built
upon a maze of geological
faults. During the 20th century,
it was hit by two severe
earthquakes, then felt the
seismic aftershocks of
dictatorship, treachery and
revolution.
The first time I came here, you
could become a millionaire by
changing a single dollar.
Inflation was running at 30,000
per cent, which made life
confusing for the tourist and
uncomfortable for the people.
The capital comprised a random
selection of derelict buildings
separated by patches of
wasteland. (Even now, do not
expect formal street addresses;
directions are given relative to
a landmark that may have been
erased many years ago.) Things
have improved a little, but
Managua still resembles 100
suburbs in search of escape.
Time to run away. Happily, buses
queue up to take escapees south
along the Pan-American Highway.
The first rule of bus travel in
Latin America: always choose the
best class of vehicle you can
afford. There's usually a wide
range, from comfortable to
condemned. In Nicaragua,
however, one size fits all.
Just. The standard joke among
backpackers on the Pan-American
Highway: How many people can you
get on to a Nicaraguan bus?
Answer: Two more.
I boarded the next Bluebird bus
running south along the highway.
This wheezing yellow monster was
built 20 years ago, near
Washington, DC. After years of
ferrying American children to
school, it reached the end of
its natural life. That's when it
was shipped down the
Pan-American to Nicaragua.
The highway itself is the
world's longest thoroughfare, at
15,000 miles, but has an
identity crisis. You know where
you are with, say, the M6 or
Highway One along the
Californian coast. These
impressive pieces of transport
infrastructure are clearly
defined, and are difficult to
muddle with one another, or
other, lesser roads. The
Pan-American Highway is
different. For much of its
length, it is an anonymous
string of freeways and main
streets.
Few people in Edmonton in
Canada, Laredo in Texas or
Mexico City are even aware that
their city sits astride the
artery of the Western
Hemisphere. Once the
Pan-American snakes south from
Mexico into Guatemala, though,
it acquires a proper identity.
Threading through the volcanic
scars on the waist of the
Americas, the highway adopts the
name Panamericana, and serves as
Central America's main street.
The bus ride costs barely $1,
and takes barely an hour to
reach the antithesis of Managua.
Masaya is a real town, and, by
presidential decree, officially
the "folkloric capital of
Nicaragua". El Presidente had in
mind the Mercado Viejo, the old
market, where a mix of exquisite
crafts and inept tat is hawked
to the few visitors who stray
in. But just five miles from the
middle of town, as the lava
flows, you can make a journey to
the centre of the earth. Miss
it, and you'll be fuming.
Rarely do you find an active
volcano with its own car park -
but then, Nicaragua has to make
what it can of its limited
tourism repertoire. The early
Spanish arrivals thought that
Apoyo, as the smouldering cone
is known, was the gateway to
hell. She hasn't had a serious
eruption for several centuries,
but she's still smoking - and in
2001, she burped out some lava
and set fire to three tourist
coaches, fortunately without
injury.
On any trip in Latin America,
the most valuable thing to bring
with you is patience. In the
Spanish-English dictionary,
ahora translates as "now", and
ahorita as "right now". In
reality, the bus along the
highway will leave when the
driver and conductor are
satisfied that the crush of
humanity squeezed into their
vehicle constitutes a
commercially viable payload.
Also, you will have to exchange
concepts such as haste and
comfort for the surprises of the
road. Just south of Masaya, we
stopped in the middle of nowhere
for people to hop on and off.
This is by no means uncommon.
Suddenly, a cheer erupted from
the front that not even the
dampening effect of a hundred or
so passengers could mute. Led by
a pageboy in a dazzling white
bow tie, a wedding party climbed
aboard. The bride, who looked
not a day older than 17, wore a
fabulous white dress that had
somehow eluded the grime of
daily life, and the yellow
school bus became her stretch
limo.
During your trip down the
Pan-American Highway, you should
take a turn along some of the
ribs that project from the spine
of Central America. The most
enticing side-trip is to Lake
Nicaragua, which rivals entire
Central American countries for
size. Roll off the highway at
the turn to San Jorge, and you
can roll on to a ferry and cross
the lake to the largest of its
300 islands: Ometepe. In the
language of the original
inhabitants, ome means two and
tepe means hills. You can
imagine the terrain. The pair of
unmatching volcanoes, known as
Concepcion and Maderas, were
joined two centuries ago by the
lava flow. In the mornings, both
peaks tend to be hidden beneath
a blanket of cloud, but by
afternoon, the view should be
clear.
For a throwback to the years of
the Sandinistas, stay at Finca
Magdalena. It is a workers'
cooperative and one of the last
remnants of socialism: a land of
milk, honey and organic coffee.
The main hacienda was built in
1888. During the Sandinista
years, it was handed over to the
workers. It may look rustic, but
it has a satellite internet link
and a deal to supply the coffee
shops on the Pacific coast of
North America. The finca also
takes in guests; £25 will buy
you a night in a wooden cabin
that sleeps four - for the same
amount, you can hang up your own
hammock and stay for a month.
Nicaragua caters for more than
backpackers. Down the highway,
and close to the resort of San
Juan del Sur, you'll find the
most exclusive hotel on
Nicaragua's Pacific coast.
Morgan's Rock is a
British-designed, French-owned
honeymoon hideaway, where a
night for two costs around £200
- including meals, drinks and a
view so magnificent in scale,
complexion and drama that it
will be etched on your memory
forever.
A few miles on, you face the
biggest aggravation of the
Pan-American Highway: crossing a
border. Now, you might think
that a frontier is simply
somewhere to cross a line
between nations. But in Central
America, it constitutes an
almost limitless job-creation
scheme. Between Nicaragua and
Costa Rica, for example, first
you pay $1 for the benefit of
the local mayor. Next, the
officials in the Nicaraguan
immigration building demand $2
for your exit stamp. The
Nicaragua frontier post and the
entrance to Costa Rica are so
far apart that most pedestrians
pay another couple of dollars
for a handcart to take their
luggage halfway, and then - in
more affluent Costa Rica - a
transfer to a golf buggy that
goes the rest of the way.
As soon as you're over the
border, everything seems neater.
But, thankfully, the same
flexibility of public transport
as the rest of Central America
is undiminished. The driver of a
4x4 offered me a lift to the
capital in return for $10; he
had delivered some tourists to
the border and was happy to earn
something on his way home. And I
was happy to be a Pan-American
passenger as the highway swayed
and swerved towards San Jose.
An extra dimension was provided
by the driver's views on the
state of his nation: while the
relative tranquillity of Costa
Rica in the Eighties and
Nineties had helped to fuel a
tourism boom, Norteamericanos
were now switching their spend
to low-cost Nicaragua. British
Airways, too, had abandoned the
country. And, once the diversion
of the Pan-American Highway
along Costa Rica's Pacific coast
is complete (due by 2007), San
Jose would be bypassed and
people would spend even less
time and money in the country.
In Costa Rica's capital, the
present Pan-American Highway
wriggles through a chicane of
homes, factories and once-grand
public buildings. Its identity
for this stretch of the journey
is Avenida 0 - Avenue Zero,
which was about as long as I
planned to stay in San Jose. To
avoid the queues at Costa Rica's
bus stations, and to make the
most of the most dramatic
section of the entire Highway, I
chose to rent a car that would
lead me to Everest, Siberia, and
Scotland.
The road leaving San José is a
fast dual carriageway, but about
30 miles out of town it collides
with the mountains. To clear the
barrier, it zigs and zags and
spirals its way to the summit of
Cerro de la Muerte, the "hill of
death". When you see how some of
the locals drive, you will not
be surprised by the name; both
vehicles and people function
less well at nearly 13,000 feet.
You pass a café called Soda
Everest and a settlement called
Siberia, but the terrain shares
the corrugated look of the
Scottish highlands.
Derrumbes en la via reads a road
sign. Uneven road surface,
indeed. Yet the signs could be
placed anywhere in Costa Rica,
or the whole region: Central
America is one big collection of
derrumbes en la via. You could
protract this drive for days,
stopping off at every mirador
(look-out) perched on the most
dramatic bends. Or head down to
the coast, which has a "best
before" date of perhaps 18
months from now; after that, the
coast road will become the
official Pan-American Highway,
slicing several hours off the
journey through Costa Rica, but
bringing the constant growl of
traffic to the beautiful beaches
along the shore.
Sleeping alongside the present
Pan-American Highway can prove
tricky; as well as the noise,
the average motel is devoid of
class, cleanliness or charm.
Thankfully, Costa Rica saves its
best until the frontier. The
hills near the Panamanian border
are alive with the sound of
Austrian cash pouring in, to
fund the Esquinas Rainforest
Lodge, a hotel that, for once,
deserves the prefix "eco-". The
cabins are built from fallen
trees, the roofs are thatched
with palm and there's no
air-conditioning. The water for
the swimming pool comes from a
spring in the rainforest, while
food is grown around the lodge
or bought locally. Workers from
the nearby village of La Gamba
are employed, with preference
given to those with children.
And any profits that the lodge
makes are given to the
community.
Esquinas is not just very moral,
it is also very expensive by
Costa Rican standards: $70 per
person per night. But that
includes all your meals - and
the pleasure of waking to a
cacophony of creatures sounding
more like a chorus of
mobile-phone ringtones, before
heading to the frontier.
Stretch a country the size of
Scotland into an S-shape, and
you get Panama. You also get
long distances to cover, but
these can be devoured by Central
America's finest fleet of buses.
They stop every three or four
hours at a roadhouse, where you
get a decent feed and an insight
into the lives of the
Panamanians. This is the
region's most multicultural
country: the terrain and
rainforest helped to protect the
indigenous Indians, who have
been joined by Asians and
Africans, many of them brought
in to work on the Big Ditch.
They, and the rest of the world,
have converged on Panama City.
Your ride through Central
America reaches its penultimate
cadence where the Bridge of the
Americas straddles the Pacific
mouth of the Panama Canal, then
plunges into the capital. Panama
City itself bombards your
emotions with a blaze of colour,
scattered fragments of the past
and a location that teeters on
the brink of the world's biggest
ocean. The Panamanian capital is
a grand menagerie, where you
need to stop and look and
listen: a city that belongs to
the world. The aforementioned
ice-cream vendor's customers
cover the human spectrum of skin
colour, and gossip in a Babel of
tongues.
Soon after leaving Panama City,
the Pan-American Highway runs
into difficulty. Anyone hoping
for the fast lane to Tierra del
Fuego, at the far end of South
America, is on a road to
nowhere. East of the Panamanian
capital, the highway
deteriorates. The Pan-American
finally dissolves into the dust
at the forlorn town of Yaviza,
giving up the struggle against
the choking jungle.
No through road, indeed: this is
the Darien Gap, one of the last
wildernesses in the Western
world: a tangle of vegetation
draped over hills and laced with
rivers. If the terrain sounds
daunting, just wait until you
meet the residents. The
mosquitoes alone carry a medical
encyclopaedia's worth of
unpleasant diseases, while the
jungle is infiltrated by an
unholy mix of narco-traffickers
and Colombian paramilitaries,
who do not take kindly to
intruders. Best stay in Panama
City, have another ice-cream,
rest your body and invigorate
your soul.
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Simon Calder is the author of
'The Panamericana: On the Road
through Mexico and Central
America' (Vacation Work).
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