Regarding Nephites crossing through Panama as Some Theorists Claim – Part II

Continued from the previous post, regarding why Lehi never landed just south of Panama, and why the Land of Promise was not on both sides of the Darién Gap.

The Darién Gap, a 10,000-square-mile jungle and rainforest marsh and swampland that has defied taming for more than a thousand years; first settled along the fringes beginning in 1510, and which Balboa crossed to discover the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean in 1513

 

As illustrated in the last post, the Darién Gap is an unconquerable stretch of land along the Panama and Colombia border that stretches for 100 miles from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific and nearly 100 miles northeastward from Colombia to Panama. As mentioned previously, it is considered the most dangerous jungle trek in the Western Hemisphere.
    That some modern-day theorists who have never seen this area, been to it, or spent any time investigating it, to make claims that it was located within the Land of Promise, and even in the middle of that land through which Nephites and Lamanties had to travel, is ludicrous.
    In fact, it is amazing that knowledgeable writers and theorists would consider such a location given all the information we know about this area today, that was always this same jungle and swampland and the most difficult place to cross in the entire Western Hemisphere, if not the world.

The remarkable (left) 1919 Model-T Ford, and (right) the 1926 Ford Model TT truck, perhaps the most durable vehicles in existence during this era, having won endurance races against larger and far more expensive vehicles of the day

 

As covered in the last post, it wasn’t until 1928-1938 that someone actually crossed the Gap in some type of vehicle—a remarkably durable 1919 Model T (“Tin Lizzie”) and a 1926 Model  TT truck, then twenty-one years later in 1959, after the logging deforestation of parts of the rain forest and jungle in the Darién Gap, that the Gap was crossed again, and became an adventurer’s challenge.
    As pointed out in the last post, some modern adventurers have managed to cross the Gap in the 19^th century, but the trip, with plenty of modern equipment and supplies, has been described by those who accomplished this unusual fete to have been the most dangerous and arduous adventure that could possibly be imagined.

Some have tried to cross the Darién Gap on foot. Most have never made it, though a few have trekked the Gap successfully

It should be pointed out, that since 1975, there have been a few brave adventurers who have crossed the Gap on foot, when in that year, Sebastian Snow (the first man to ever travel the length of the Amazon River), along with Wade Davis (named as “One of the Explorers for the Millennium” and a world adventurer) crossed the Gap as part of Snow’s unbroken walk from Tierra del Fuego to Costa Rica.
    In 1977, George Meegan, another world-renowned adventurer, crossed the Gap on a similar journey. He too started in Tierra del Fuego and eventually ended in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a trip covering 19,019 miles in 2,425 days. In his 1988 biography, The Longest Walk, he describes in great detail his harrowing trip through the Gap in a 25-page chapter of the ordeal. In his overall walk, he took 41 million steps, wore out over 12 pair of Italian hiking boots, and crossing the Gap he was shot at and survived a knifing attack.

In 1979 evangelist and world walker Arthur Blessitt traversed the gap while carrying a 12-foot wooden cross, a trek confirmed by Guinness World Records as part of "the longest round the world pilgrimage" for Christ. He traveled alone with a machete plus one backpack crammed with water bottles, a hammock, Bible, notepad, lemon drops, and Blessitt's signature Jesus stickers saying "Smile! God Loves you.”
    In 2001, as a part of his Goliath Expedition—a trek to walk an unbroken footpath around the world from the tip of South America to the Bering Strait in Alaska and back to his home in England—ex-paratrooper, adventurer and explorer, Karl Bushby of the UK crossed the Gap on foot, using no transport or boats, from Colombia to Panama.
    In July 1996, as part of their hitchhiking trip through 17 Latin American countries to Ushuaia (tip of South America), adventurers Walter Bläs, Ana Cravioto, Albrecht von der Recke and Gustavo Ross crossed from Panama to Colombia, becoming the first Mexicans to cross the Gap by foot, according to the visitor’s log kept since 1946 in Púcuro. The night of the 28th of July they survived the Hurricane Cesar-Douglas in the jungle somewhere between Paya and Palo de las Letras. Accompanied by 11- and 13-year old Lico and Juan from Paya, the survivors report several big trees falling around them and river levels rising up to 3 meters that night.

Crossing the Darién Gap from Panama to Colombia

Most crossings of the Darién Gap region have been from Panama to Colombia. In July 1961, three college students, Carl Adler, James Wirth, and Joseph Bellina, crossed from the Bay of San Miguel to Puerto Obaldia on the Gulf of Parita, near Colombia, and ultimately to Mulatupu in what was then known as San Blas and now identified as Kuna Yala. The trip across the Darién Gap was by banana boat, panga, piragua dugout, and foot via the Turia River, Río Chucunaque, Rio Tuquesa Trading Post and Serranía del Darién (Carl Adler, "A Trip to Panama", The Scholastic, vol,104, no.11, January 18, 1963, p18).
    In 1985, Project Raleigh, which evolved from Project Drake in 1984 and in 1989 became Raleigh International, sponsored an expedition which also crossed the Darién coast to coast. Their path was the reverse of the 1961 route. The expedition started in the Bay of Caledonia the Serranía del Darién and followed the Río Membrillo ultimately to the Río Chucunaque and Yaviza, roughly following the route taken by Balboa in1513.
    Between the early 1980s and mid-1990s a British adventure travel company, Encounter Overland, organized 2–3 week trekking trips through the Darién Gap from Panama to Colombia. These trips used a combination of whatever transport was available: jeeps, bus, boats, and plenty of walking, with travelers carrying their own supplies.
    These groups were made up of male and female participants from any number of nationalities and age groups, and were led by experienced trek leaders. One of the leaders went on to do nine Darién Gap trips and later acted as a logistics guide and coordinator for the BBC Natural History Unit during the production of a documentary called A Tramp in the Darién, which screened on BBC in 1990–91.
    As can be seen, almost all of those who managed to cross the Gap were not average people—they were world adventurers and explorers, who had numerous experiences in many parts of the world. After all, crossing the Gap is not for the faint of heart, but the past centuries have shown it is for the very few who have braved trials unimaginable to most people. To think that Nephites would have been criss-crossing an area like this in the daily activities in the Land of Promise is both inane and nonsensical.

The Colombia side of the Gap is extremely hazardous because of the Serrania del Baudo Mountain Range along the coast running into Panama, with the Atrato Valley, a flat swampland, the the Atrato River

 

In addition, along the coast of Colombia, 230-foot cliffs with small pocket beaches of a little sand, but mostly shingle and cobble stones, making landing or movement northward nearly impossible along the coast. These cliffs build into the Serranía del Baudó mountain range. There was and is simply no way to get around the dense jungles and swamplands of the Darien Gap.
(See the next post, “Regarding Nephites crossing through Panama as Some Theorists Claim – Part III,” for more on why Lehi never landed just south of Panama, and the Land of Promise was not on both sides of the Darién Gap)