A tourist route cutting through the currently impassable Darien Gap to link Panama with Venezuela will be constructed before 2012, Colombia’s transportation minister announced Wednesday.
The ambitious 2,000-km roadway would cost US$2.5 million, transportation minister Andrés Uriel Gallego said, according to French press agency AFP.
He did not give any details how the road would pass through the thick and lawless jungle of the Darien Gap, where currently tourists are highly discouraged from traveling.
“This would be more a tourism project than a transportation route, because we would have a connection with Panamá of just six hours by car, increasing the number of visitors to the country,” the minister said during a forum of business and tourism authorities in Cartagena.
Dubbing it the “Great Route of the Americas,” the minister said “the route will become real union with Central America and North America.
Environmental organizations have historically opposed roadways or other development through the Darien Gap.