Obsessions Die Hard Motorcycling The Pan American Highway’S Jungle Gap

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As a teenager Ed Culberson was fascinated by the Pan American Highway System, which runs the length of North and South America. In his early forties, he acquired another passion–motorcycling. It was only natural that he would merge the two. Culberson, then a retired U.S. Army officer, decided to ride the Pan American Highway’s entire route between Alaska and Argentina, but in eastern Panama and western Colombia’s Darien region the road is broken by an 80-mile gap filled with jungles, rain forests, rivers, and swamps, which forces travelers to detour around by boat or plane. The area is so inhospitable and unexplored that a myth about its impenetrability has evolved over the centuries, and a curse aimed at Darien trespassers shrouds the region. But the Darien Gap, known as el tapon del Darien the Stopper, didn’t stop Culberson’s dream. It turned it into an obsession.