The Carretera Panamericana, the Pan-American Highway, runs 19,000 miles from Alaska to the tip of Argentina. However, there’s a stretch of about 60 miles between Panama and Colombia called the Darien Gap where the jungle is too thick to build a road through. Cars traveling the Pan-American Highway need to take a boat from Panama to Colombia on this section of the journey.
In Panama, very few people own cars, so most people get around via bus. Panama’s main bus terminal, Gran Terminal Nacional de Transporte, also known as the Albrook Terminal, is the home base for buses that take people all around the country. Buses taking more passengers to bigger cities are coach buses, whereas smaller buses, called busitos, take passengers to smaller cities. Each of the busitos has the names of the destination on their windshield, so it’s easy to know if it’ll take you to the right place. If you’re confused, you can ask the bus's pavo, which literally translates to turkey. The pavo stands at the front of the bus, near the driver, and leans out the door to recruit potential passengers, ask where they’re going and make sure everyone who hops on and off the busito pays the appropriate fare.
