TRAVELLING through the world’s most inhospitable terrain – the Darién Gap – the now infamous crossing had all the makings of a classic adventure story: endurance, impenetrable undergrowth unmapped to any humans, wild animals, ill health and, of course, Land Rovers. Fifty years later, I’m fortunate enough to catch up with expedition leader, Colonel John Blashford-Snell CBE, for a trip less down memory lane than along a track slashed through unconquered jungle.
Although it was five decades ago, Blashford-Snell’s recollections of the expedition remain crystal clear. Trying to forge a navigable route through uncharted jungle, with two broken Range Rovers languishing behind, he counts it as one of the toughest challenges of his long and fascinating career.
“It was a race against time,” he recalls, from his permanent Expedition Base in the Dorset countryside, from where, aged 85, he still plans annual expeditions to South America and Mongolia, between writing books and preparing lectures. “With the Range Rovers out of action, we were losing time and we only had 100 days to get through before the rains started.”
Just months earlier Blashford-Snell, then a major in the Royal Engineers, had been brought on-board with the British-led Trans-Americas expedition, a pioneering journey that would see two of British Leyland’s recently-launched Range Rover models drive from Alaska to the southernmost tip of Chile, Cape Horn.
Explorer and founder of the Scientific Exploration Society, Blashford-Snell was tasked with forging a vehicular route through 250 miles of unchartered South American jungle and the Great Atrato Swamp.
Half of the six months allotted to the 18,000-mile journey were dedicated to its toughest central section, which had been a long-standing impediment to the dream of a Pan-American Highway, running the
