If you like driving, throughout the planet there are some roads so legendary that they invite you to travel them at least once in your life. This is the case of the iconic Route 66 that crosses the United States from Chicago to Los Angeles, the beautiful and curvy Romanian Transfăgărășan or the dangerous Highway of Death in Bolivia. But if you have time and you are in America, there is one to explore the continent practically from start to finish: the Pan-American route.
The longest road in the world. The Pan-American Highway It has a length of 17,848 kilometers, which allows it to travel across the American continent from north to south: from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego in Argentina.
Of course, the figure corresponds only to the main road, but in reality it is a multitude of roads in different countries and characteristics, so that they adapt their layout to areas such as large cities, the coast or the mountains. If we add the variants and branches, it shoots up to 30,000 kilometers, although the Guinness says simply that it is more than 24,140 kilometers through the 14 countries it crosses.
The origins. Although originally was glimpsed like a pan-american railroad, at the Fifth International Conference of American States 1923 when the idea took shape like a highway, given the takeoff of the automobile. However, it would take decades for it to materialize: it was at the Convention on the Pan-American Highway when the 14 countries signed the agreement and Mexico the first country to complete its partback in 1950.
To choose which route was the best, the “Brazilian Pan-American Highway Expedition” was a pioneer in the task of traveling the continent choosing the most practical route. Lieutenant Leônidas Borges de Oliveira as mission leader, Francisco Lopes da Cruz as observer and Mário Fava as mechanic left Rio de Janeiro on April 16, 1928 with two Model T Fords and arrived in Washington DC ten years later.
In figures. Only those 17,848 kilometers of length of its main road already make it the longest route, followed by others such as transsiberian highway (it only runs through Russia and is about 11,000 kilometers) or the Highway 1 Australian 14,500 kilometres. But there are more impressive figures:
- It travels through 14 countries and connects 10 state capitals.
- There is only an incomplete section of 106 kilometers.
- 23 days, 22 hours and 43 minutes is the record time to travel it by car, which is registered in the Guinness Book of World Records. If you drive 8 hours a day, it doesn’t add up
- Its highest point is in Costa Rica Hill of Deathat about 3,500 meters high.
The exception: the Darien plug. Although the Pan-American Highway runs through America from top to bottom, technically this is not the case: there is a hole in the border between Panama and Colombia, the Darién Gap. This jump on the road is in a mountainous and rugged area in the middle of the jungle. That is, the highway ends in Turbo (Colombia) on one side and in Yaviza (Panama) on the other. Mountains, swamps and a dense jungle have been a compelling orographic reason why you cannot cross America continuously by car without leaving that road.
However, there have also been environmental and political problems that have prevented the closure of the route. In 1971, the United States, Colombia and Panama they agreed cover this route and their respective economic contributions. However, after environmental protests and a correction in the cost estimate that practically doubled it, the project was stopped. Today there are no active plans to close the Pan-American Highway.
A road full of challenges. This environmental wealth reveals a reality, that of the confrontation between the development of infrastructure and the conservation of the environment, as it passes through unique landscapes.
Along its route, the Panamericana crosses tropical jungles, the Andes mountain range, deserts or seismic zones that mean that this was not just another highway construction. Access or weather conditions are a challenge for machinery, personnel and materials. And once built, there is the challenge of maintaining a road network across different countries, budgets and standards.
Cover | Joseph Corl, FanHabbo and Seaweege
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