A Peak in Darien by Robin Hanbury-Tenison

"Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

I hope every schoolchild, or at least every geography student, knows that Keats was wrong and that it was Balboa who first set European eyes on the Pacific.

"On Tuesday 25 September 1513, at 10 o'clock in the morning, Vasco Nunez [de Balboa], climbed a hill with a bare summit, and from the top of this hill saw the South Sea." A couple of days later he and his men reached the shore and, after waiting for the tide to come in across the mud flats, "with his drawn sword in his hand and his shield on his arm, he waded into the salt sea up to his knees, and paced back and forth"... reciting praises to his king and queen and taking possession of all the "seas, lands, coasts, harbours and islands, with all territories, kingdoms and provinces which belong to them..." Those were the days.

One of the nice things about finding oneself, almost overnight, being numbered among the ancients instead of being a thrusting young explorer, is that one tends to have seen it all before. I can't claim to have been there with Balboa, but I did explore Darien in 1972 and wrote an article about it in the Geographical the same year. I was part of an expedition organised by John Blashford-Snell to drive two of the first Range Rovers through the Darien Gap and so complete the final 402 km link in the 21,000 km Pan American Highway. A handful of those John generously brought along questioned the wisdom of this ambition, since the isthmus had the third highest recorded rainfall in the world, which supports a rare and fragile ecosystem and is home to two tribes of independent-minded Indians, the Choco and the Cuna. I spent my months attached to the expedition entirely with the Indians and emerged convinced that the road must not go through.

The expedition had a Beaver aircraft to support the sixty-five members manhandling the Range Rovers through the forests and swamps of Darien. I was able to use this to be dropped into various Indian villages and spend some weeks travelling with young men from the tribe by dugout canoe, which we then carried over the watershed into new and unknown areas before being collected again from a predetermined rendezvous. In this way, I was able to spend only four nights in total at Base Camp and the whole of the rest of the time in one of the most idyllic environments to be found anywhere. I can't resist quoting the nice things John had to say about me in his subsequent book ‘Where the Trails Run Out’:

"Robin, champion of primitive peoples, already knew more about the jungles of South America than any of us. His charm and eloquence, combined with an easy, self-assured attitude, had a settling effect on the tense nerves of some of our colleagues. With the minimum of fuss, he gathered a few stores and set off into the forest to make contact with his beloved Indians. From time to time, this elusive and almost mythical figure, whom many of the expedition never saw, would emerge and quietly restock his rucksack with film and small gifts. Those who met him during these fleeting visits to civilisation heard the case against the road skillfully put and realised that there was another side to the argument. But for most of us the jungle was a cruel enemy contesting every step..."

I said he was a generous man! The trouble was that most of the other members were fighting the forest while I was lucky enough to be with people who knew how to live in harmony with it. Well over half of the expedition were evacuated with insect bites and upset stomachs during the four months it took to get the vehicles through.

The Choco, with whom I spent most of my time, may well have been the first mainland Indians seen by visitors from the old world, for Columbus sighted Darien on his last voyage. Yet they had survived by choosing not to fight, but to melt away ever further into the interior where they could hunt and fish and grow a few crops in an environment friendly to them but hostile to those who did not understand it.

The other group I visited was the inland Cuna. Their cousins on the San Blas islands are well known but these had remained on the ancestral lands on the Bayano River, guardians of tribal tradition and lore. They were divided on the question of the road but united in their opposition to the vast dam that was about to flood most of their land. I went fishing with the men of Icanti village using a great black net which they told me was only taken out a very few times each year. In one cast, when the end was drawn out into the river behind a canoe, a large area encircled and we all plunged in to drag it ashore, splashing to prevent the fish escaping and diving down to stop it snagging, we had a haul of nearly half a ton consisting of 400 fish ranging in size from 500g to 3kg. I was impressed and asked how often they did this. "Very seldom" they replied and added, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world "Otherwise, we would soon remove all the fish in the river and we would go hungry." Don't tell me tribal people don't know how to manage their environments.

The dam was completed soon after and a huge fetid lake created. Great efforts were made to rescue stranded animals, but nothing was done for the Cuna...

And the road? The Indians and I were not alone in opposing it. A test case was fought in the District Court in Washington by a group of environmental and human rights organisations, including Survival, objecting to the US government putting up most of the money - and we won. The road has still not been built. The clincher was demonstrating that the Darien represented the only effective barrier between South and North America to the spread of foot and mouth disease. Ironically, it was probably the cattle barons of Texas who saved that bit of rain forest.