Rough Road to Panama

[Music] the pan-american highway yes we've been over what there is of it but I'm not recommending anyone start down the tomorrow attempting to drive to Buenos Aires there are too many miles to which the highway has not been built and while I'm no prophet I'll venture a small prediction it will be a long time before you can drive to South America you see Arnold and I have tried it twice we speak with some authority the first time we tried newspapers gave us big write-ups Detroit expedition ready to blaze Auto trail to Cape Horn said one 8th column headline across 14,000 miles of North and South America through tremendous expanses of jungle and over high mountains it said is the ambitious undertaking of an expedition which will leave here tomorrow to attempt what no one has ever done that reporter was good believe me he was he said we'd succeed because we were big and strong and brave and courageous and because we were experienced explorers well I admit we were big but I don't want even to mention our courage it was 98 percent not having any idea in the world what we were getting into and as for that third item Arnold and I had ridden pack horses for eight days once out in southern Utah following a trail the Mormons had taken wagons over 60 years before we ever saw the place if eight days on pack horses constitutes experienced exploration then the reporter was right Arnold and I were experienced explorers our reason for taking this Cape Horn trip was to get newspaper stories and motion picture film along the pan-american highway route and to get material for a book it was a self-imposed reporting assignment but let me take you with us on this trip it really is an experience we will start here at Washington DC across the country and enter Mexico at Nogales Arizona continuing the West Coast route to the Mexican capital the pan-american highway is paved from the rate of Texas here to Mexico City but for adventures sake and to get well warmed up for the tremendous difficulties ahead we'll leave the pavement to wiser and more cautious motorists and we'll do it the hard way right from the beginning then from Mexico City we travel south to Oaxaca down to Guatemala then through Central America to Costa Rica and by boat around here because there is absolutely no way to drive through southern Costa Rica and then on down to the Panama Canal that will be the end of this first half of our picture story in film number two of this trip entitled rugged road to Cape Horn we will begin here take a boat down to Buenaventura de Colombia then on up to Bogota the capital and south again to keep the Ecuador to Lima Peru and down to arequipa then up over the Andes 16,000 feet in the sky and across Bolivia's desolate uplands and down here to Buenos Aires then we will continue south to Patagonia seemingly limitless papa to Magellan straits and finally as guests of the Chilean Navy on out to Cape Horn in a storm I promise you both education and adventure on this trip high adventure we will pull no punches we give you here the realistic story of men trying to follow by automobile the route of what one day will be the greatest highway in the world the pan-american from the United States to Magellan straits and Cape Horn here we are then in Washington DC where we drive up in front of the Pan American Union Building to shake hands with dr. LS Road director general of the Union who wishes us good luck on our long journey before we reach Magellan straits we're going to need more good luck than dr. Roe or anyone else who hasn't actually been over the route could possibly imagine our wish for us arriving at the Mexican border town of Nogales we present ourselves to customs authorities and are permitted to pass without opening a single bag or piece of equipment this same courtesy is extended to us at every frontier to Magellan straits a record of friendliness helpfulness and cooperation from our Latin neighbor governments of which we're extremely proud our expedition outfit is composed of this Plymouth sedan was special 35 gallon gas tank built into the trunk backseat left out to make room for our mountainous pile of equipment which is sandwiched clear to the ceiling oversized wheels and extra power in the transmission the car when fully loaded with gasoline water food equipment in the three of us Arnold Whitaker Kenneth van he and myself weighs fifty six hundred and thirty pounds almost three ton for one motor to take to Cape Horn the first day there is Road all the way at Guam us but from there South for a thousand miles there is only a dry weather trail for hive wheeled carts and we hit it after a sixth day rain carefully at first we dodged every roadway Rock the size of your fist and knees into every hole for fear we might break a spring or harm the car we ease into this hole in stay three hours when we finally get out we realize that babying the car can have no place on this expeditions calendar that if it doesn't have what it takes to go to Cape Horn we'd better find it out before we get too far away from home so from here on we dive in the mud holes skid into fences and stumps bolt through ruts on two wheels and follow hour after hour along highway like this coming out occasionally into the picturesque little villages which dot the west coast of Mexico usually there is a cobblestone road through the village and out to the edge of town from there on nothing but up these cobblestones come the natives with their burrows this young fellow is so proud of his burrito as the tiny beast is called in Spanish so he brings it up to the car to have its picture taken when the pan-american highway system is finally completed there will of course be a paved road of this West Coast to connect with western United States then there will be bridges over these rivers but just now there are no bridges and we get across them as best we can sometimes by ferry sometimes under our own power and at other times with a good deal of help this young fellow has followed along behind us for almost 5 miles he kept yelling at us no pueden pasar Senora Steen Mullis meaning we couldn't get across without the help of his mules when we see how deep the stream is we decide he's right and let him take our film and equipment across in his hiked wheeled cart so it won't get wet then with his mules hooked onto the front bumper and with Arnold on the inside revving up the motor to a tremendous roar it's just all the combination can do to get up the sandy bank of the stream in the Mexican capital we call it go Benassi own to meet young handsome Don licencias Oh Miguel Aleman since become President of Mexico he extends us every possible courtesy and with letters from him we are permitted to take pictures of anything we want that will help tell a more complete story of this great neighbor Republic of her ancient cultures which are among the earliest in this hemisphere pictures in the great National Museum Park tourists cameras are never permitted pictures some of which were the first ever taken in color of Mexico's famous prehistoric gold and jewels I'll show them to you in a moment believe me we're grateful to Miguel Aleman here we are then in the National Museum and now looking at the great Aztec stone calendar a masterpiece of early workmanship by a people of which we know little by this great stone two feet thick and 14 feet across the months days weeks and seasons of the year were recorded it is perhaps the most famous single stone relic in the Western Hemisphere and copies of it may be found on many leather goods coming out of Mexico this is the amazingly carved sacrificial stone of T's Ock historical Aztec war king who put the torn hearts of his victims still pulsing and beating in that groundout Cup at the top and now the golden jewels of which I spoke fashioned by unknown and centuries ago they run covered in tomb seven of this ancient mountaintop city of monte alban their solid gold 24 karat gold and absolutely priceless as relics of the past that we might obtain these pictures Mexican authorities close the museum for us at Oaxaca during the forenoon of two days opened the sealed glass cases in which the jewels were kept brought them out into the sunlight of the inner patio and with soldier guards armed with rifles standing about me I handled and worked over these beautiful objects Jade pieces brooches pendants earrings necklaces most of them depicting the different gods of these first Americans delicately beautiful in detail of workmanship symbolic of castes and culture among these people here is the Jagger Knight breastplate one of the most magnificent pieces of the entire collection and this is the mask of the god of the flayed representing the God who was supposed to receive the souls of people who were beaten to death for their sins and this headband four inches wide and large enough for me to wear with a 14-inch feather all of pure gold no wonder we appreciated Mexico's courtesy in permitting us to photograph these priceless documents of her ancient past below Oaxaca we now hit a stretch of geography that almost stalls the expedition it takes us 25 days to cover 50 miles two miles a day average and we're plenty glad to make two miles no real traffic of any kind ever traverses this section it is simply a burrow trail over which the plodding feet of human beings made travel are the heavily laden feet of animals and we try to take our car through it the first three days we make nine miles and I think spend more time on our hands and knees and on our stomachs than we do on our feet trying to get the car safely over the sharp rocks and boulders one fall slip from the jagged rock might puncture the oil pan of the gas tank that would finish us we use the utmost effort and caution if the big rocks can be moved we lift or pry them out of the way if they won't budge we throw in loose rock to build around them and lift the car up over the top it is torturous toil hour after hour of back-breaking to go two or three hundred yards those engineers in Mexico City who said we couldn't do it Arnold pronounces bitterly sure knew what they were talking about only we've got to do it so we keep right on working it is while following this mountain borough trail for 25 days that we have our first introduction to something which becomes a deep set conviction to all tropic travelers that the breathtaking color and beauty of tropic flowers are almost beyond ordinary words we see them everywhere cactus blooms brine flowers orchids huge clumps of them going on old trees or stumps air plants flowers so delicate in color and texture that you swear they should grow in a hothouse instead of just any old place out in the open these lovely red bougainvillea can be seen in almost any open patio in Mexico and I never can resist the temptation to get on the shady side and shoot up through the petals toward the Sun to give myself this luminous transparency of color which i think is so delightful here is a flower of a little different color on texture this chaps older brother had captured this little anteater a day or two before we came along and now the boy plays with it as your little son or brother would play with a pet kitten around the house and I'm sure you've heard of the marching ants of the other Americas haven't you well here they are we see them many times wearing their own little Highway two or three inches wide sometimes through grass as high as your knees I take a stick and draw a trench across their highway causing a traffic jam a hard-boiled cop could easily get his hands full here we follow them for almost quarter of a mile to see where they're getting the leaves and finally find them running up and down the trunk of this rather peculiar tree some of the ants with what seems almost human intelligence are up in the tree cutting off the leaves and dropping them down for other ants to carry off to their anthill home I warned you about the realism of this picture so I needn't hesitate over this sequence during the 25 days to these mountains we have sixteen Safa taken indians helping us their meager diet as tortillas beans and the broiled skin of pigs one Sunday morning after 18 days they wake up and say they're hungry that they're going hunting we say for what they say come along signore s and you find out so they take sticks and begin beating on hollow logs and when they hear a sound they reach in and pull out these long-tailed iguanas but surely Senor s you're not going to eat them by asking credulous Li huh amigo they tell me say go to Memphis like you North American say chicken well we North Americans will stick to chicken as my retort but they fall to work with gusto cleaning the huge lizards in the preparation for the feast they're going to have and do have and now don't these make you hungry our own eating is certainly nothing of a ceremony we eat what we can get and with as little fuss and bother as possible usually we try to carry canned goods from capital city to capital city but we often run out as we do here in these mountains and have to live on native food here we're reduced finally to our last few cans of cheap sardines and the tortillas which we're able to buy from the native women along the way doesn't this look delicious well it is anyhow I didn't say a word there honest I didn't Arnold and Kenneth claim the tortillas taste to them like a cross between cement and leather without salt but I ate them as a boy and liked them one thing however we unanimously agree is good it is what the natives call paella it is nothing in the world but the cook juice of sugarcane boiled until ready to solidify then turned out into a wooden plate to cool and Harden and I do mean Harden Kenneth cuts off big chunks of it with his hunting knife and we use it to sweeten our cocoa or post them or as dessert then sometimes we even allow ourselves the luxury of piecing on it between meals because we find it nourishing and delicious and thorough leox what Arnold suddenly puts his fingers to his mouth and scales down then puts his fingers back and finally says why Sully it feels to me like I like I why I did he starts III broke the doggone thing right off and this is what we have to look at for two months because we haven't brought along a dentist and this is his tooth and the piece of panella he broke it on believe me this scene was not staged for the benefit of camera and this seems to been Arnold's day of misfortune he was upon a boulder and slipped and fell and his Kenneth puts on the iodine he adds a little artwork to take away the pain but Arnold doesn't seem to find anything humorous in the whole situation he skinned himself up pretty badly me shoulders back ribs but it's just something we have to take and say as little about as possible now come our days of real difficulty what we've gone through up to now seems almost child's play compared to this we try to pull the car by block and tackle with balls hooked onto the ropes but the balls won't pull with the motor because the roar of it frightens them so we finally have to send them home and get more men then we begin to make better time one day we go 3/10 of a mile another 6/10 another 5/10 and one day we go only 25 yards it's heartbreaking toil but we're determined not to turn back we run the car so hot at times we can't even stop the motor we switch off the ignition the car keeps right on running as if we hadn't even touched it we burn out the clutch plate from sliding it too much trying to go a few feet or inches at a time Arnel changes it and puts in our only replacement from now on we must carry the car if necessary but there can be no more sliding of the clutch we have minor accidents of course every day and there are plenty of times we'd be glad to call the whole thing off and go home if it weren't that so many people had looked at us with raised eyebrows and said we'd never see South America this is one of the times I'd be glad to go home oh I'm not hurt very badly I swung a pick at a boulder and instead of hitting it struck myself in the shin just awkwardness I guess certainly not much else but I grit my teeth and dab in the rubbing alcohol and then proceeded to smear my leg with iodine and tell myself how brave I am you know and certainly no medical school in the country would ever give me a diploma when it comes to bandage wrapping but it keeps out the dirt and that's all we need in spite of everything we can do the car each day is subjected to terrific punishment we cave in one door until it won't open we break three of the windows we stripped two gears from the transmission low and reverse so that all we have left is high and second we try to keep the rear fender from tearing the tire to pieces and finally have to cut the thing off with a hacksaw it's the first piece of the car we lose on our way to Cape Horn but 10 days later down in the jungle lowlands near the Guatemalan frontier Arnold again begins grousing about the car the thing pulls as if it didn't have any power he tells me well Arnold it's only got two gears what do you expect I demand on him I don't care it doesn't pull as if it had any gears he snorts and crawls underneath when he begins muttering to himself and throwing things out I get my camera as he finally stands up he says no wonder the darn thing wouldn't pull look it didn't even have an exhaust pipe and the whole under part of the car looks just like this pipe and muffler as if we turned it upside down and beaten it with picks and sledgehammers we leave Mexico now after three torturous months crossing her from north to south and enter Guatemala through the customs house at Rio suci update immediately from here we climb approximately 8,000 feet in one sustained climb from the jungle lowlands and fall over the crest of the mountains into this picturesque little Valley where the Indian farms hang almost like plaques on a wall on the steep sides of the mountains Guatemala is one of the most interesting and colorful Western Hemisphere her colorfully costumed Indians her clean red and white villages her high almost perfectly shaped volcanoes and her magnificently beautiful Lake atitlán along with many other attractions all make her a tourist paradise no one who travelled should miss Guatemala during the war she furnished us with great quantities of cinchona bark for quinine jungle woods rubber minerals and for many years she shipped great quantities of bananas to your table and your neighbor's table next door now we find her friendly interesting and with an all-weather road from border to border which seems like heaven after the three bad months we've just spent in Mexico also in Guatemala of great interest to us is found more ruined cities left to the silence and the jungle for centuries by more of those earliest Americans about whom we know so little here we visit Kyra Gua remnant of an ancient city of the Mayas these carved stone Stella are all that remain of the city and they stand here like gaunt old men leaning against green sunlight in a little jungle hallway kept in repair by the United Fruit Company in cooperation with a Guatemalan government there is no agreement yet the Hmong Maya research scientists as to the origin of these people archeologists anthropologists historians and others still are trying to arrive at provable conclusions much Mayan history is undoubtedly carved into these shafts of stone if we could only read it the whole Mayan calendar and many dates have been deciphered but synchronizing them with the Christian dates and the calendar as we know it has not yet been accomplished the oldest date yet recognized in these carvings is variously estimated by recognized scientists to be from 179 BC the 444 ad still no one knows some authorities see Hebrew features in the carved faces and believe the Mayans had Hebrew origin unmistakable Egyptian influence in architecture is no hit by other students and so it goes only this much is undeniable these early Americans built cities whose populations numbered in the hundreds of thousands they were a people of advanced culture and knowledge their calendar recordings of times seasons and some solar phenomena were more accurate even than our fault their great temples and pyramids show a knowledge of building craftsmanship not humanly possible to uncivilized ignorant illiterate people yet for all this from once they came unto where they suddenly went leaving their magnificent cities and ruins is one of the great mysteries of America from Guatemala we enter El Salvador smallest of the American republics but in many respects among the most progressive we're entranced by the beauty of the countryside as we drive along these perfectly gorgeous flowers growing on big trees again and the patchwork of small farms the picturesque grass roofed houses of the natives and another thing that wins our hearts paved highway imagine that after what we've just been to in Mexico and Salvador section of the pan-american highway has paved more than 75% of the way from border to border we roll along that pavement now entering san salvador capital of the republic and after a day or two visiting officials we at last meet young handsome doctor alfonso rochak one of the brilliant economists among our neighbors dealing with the problems of the working classes under the doctors genius and direction the rural industries of El Salvador have been organized and supported with government money and credit assuring considerable security and uniform prices to individuals and group workers in Salvador's many hand industries cloth weaving hat weaving pottery making novelties production and the like all this work is bought at uniform prices from the workers and offered for sale in cooperative credit those stores so that the whole enterprise is profitable self-supporting and everyone can sell what he produces let's visit one of these industries now and see how the people do it hat weaving for example the big bundles of palm grass or straw are brought in to market and the women come and start it over to buy what they need then back at home they may work individually or they may get together like this a regular Ladies Aid Society and pop and chatter between themselves as they work children weave as well as the grown-ups they learn it from the time they sit on their mother's laps although this youngster doesn't seem much interested in the process just now some of the hats are a bit ornate but you see people wearing them everywhere in El Salvador the deafness of the woman's hands as they work the concentration in their faces all of it is extremely interesting to us from El Salvador we enter Honduras and now we begin to understand what Central American bull cart trails are going to be like we were amply warned before we left Detroit about Honduras Nicaragua and Costa Rica the State Department had instructed our embassies and legations that we were coming and to assist us in every possible way within reason most of the ambassador's in their letters to us suggested pointedly that we stay home all said however that we'd never complete the trip no automobile had ever gotten through Honduras and Nicaragua we were told and now we begin to understand why dust choking clouds of it hills hill so steep and so cut with deep ruts that no car could possibly get up them without tremendous effort Russ those deep sideling ruts that only these high wheeled carts could get through and then another thing unpleasant as it was along the trail these huge hairy spiders are tarantulas about the size of my hand we see a great many of them this one is pretty full of fight and Kenneth finally kills it with a 22 rifle standing over my shoulder while in Honduras we decide to visit what is undoubtedly one of the finest agricultural schools in all the Americas at Zamorano about an hour and a half drive out of Tegucigalpa the capital city here in a lush fertile valley the school is maintained by the United Fruit Company in cooperation with the Honduran government young men from every country in Central America who have passed high tests in scholarship and adaptability are admitted board lodging and tuition are free but standards of conduct learning and studied are rigidly high few boys failed to make the great's however because they've been carefully selected to begin with here they learn the scientific methods of soil conservation fertilization cultivation and production they use the tools they'll have to use when they go home ham tools oxen powered plows and Harold's not the machine powered implements which they won't be able to afford when they graduate it's a practical school doing a fine creditable job in helping establish the agricultural economy of our neighbor Republic's and while they're learning how to make their farms and Gardens produce more they're also learning that such places can be beautiful as well I have never seen more lovely gardens and flowers like this canna lily field for instance then right here at escuela Agricola panamericana in honduras and it's a real pleasure to be able to show such pictures to our people who have a tendency to underestimate our Latin American neighbors on the way to Nicaragua we now drive two miles of country covered by these scrubby peculiar trees in whose hollow limbs and trunks apparently live these long tailed iguanas the country seems literally alive with them you see them waddling across the road climbing trees running down holes in the ground they look awkward and slow till you try to approach and then they suddenly dart away as if fired by Jet Propulsion we try to come close enough to this fellow for a picture and he runs for this tree slipping from limb to limb with surprising agility even with a telephoto lens I have trouble obtaining a decent shot I do finally get one however when we meet a young man who has captured this fellow with a small rope and is taking at home for eating we start teasing it by rubbing the spines along its back with a cane it loses no time in fighting back trying to strike us with its long bony tail as many hundreds of these things as I see I never lose interest in them inside Nicaragua the bad road in picturesque countryside continues friendly natives with big wheeled carts pigs wearing pokes one interesting scene after another time after time we're forced up into the bush where we have to cut trees out of the way which blocks our progress once in a while however nature is kind and bends the tree in exactly the right spot along Lake Nicaragua we try to follow the hard sand of the water's edge but every quarter of a mile or so volcanic ribs of rock come up out of the lake and stop us this forces us across the wide ribbon of soft sand and up into the jungle so we can get around the rocks the first day we find ourselves stuck many times after that we finally learn the thing to do is to take half an hour and build ourselves a corduroy road we call it before we ever drive out onto the sand so we hunt all the sticks we can find limbs of trees branches poles stumps any kind of wood and lay it across the ruts where we think the wheels of the car will come when everything is finally in readiness we give arnold the high sign come on now give her the gun we yell at him come on come on and don't you dare let that thing stopped the car lurches bangs slide sideways roaring like an airplane and the sticks just fly but if it rolls through without getting stuck you can forgive us a bit of boyishness when finally we enter Costa Rica our first surprise is to see these trees of yellow gold and flowers standing out above the jungles across the hills they appear like huge nuggets of gold in a grey green setting up close there is lovely and as delicate as any flowers we've seen the bloom itself is ribbed in heart-shaped with a deep golden beauty and then another bit of foolishness we need it occasionally to relax and if this isn't Beauty and the Beast you think of the title for it across the southern section of Costa Rica we find it utterly impossible to travel by car Arnold and I take a plane over the mountains toward Panama for 45 minutes to check the trail and it takes us five days to walk back we estimate that it would take us four months with a hundred and fifty men to get our car to and then it's only a bare chance we'd succeed because the rains have started so we give up and put our car aboard a banana launch and go down the coast to Panama while we're guests of the Fruit Company we decide to go out into the plantation to see what a banana split looks like in its natural habitat you know of course that bananas grow upside down so did we but it still seems curious to see them hanging here that way now these fellows proceeded to show us how the harvesting is done the tree is cut about 15 feet above the ground with this long handled knife while one fellow waits underneath to catch the stem of fruit on his shoulder with a single knife jab it has cut free of the tree then off comes the flowering tail then while the one chap carries the fruit off to the loading platform the other takes a hefty swing or two with his maturity cuts the tree down and lets it lie there where it falls to rock in a short time new stalks start out of the old stump and grow to be banana trees 20 to 30 feet high and produce another stem of fruit all in one season in this one plantation there are 26,000 acres of producing trees furnishing some six million stems of fruit per year for American breakfast tables you saw them spraying a moment ago and we're told that they spray this 26,000 acres every 15 days throughout the year so since you might wonder if your fruit were poisoned if you saw a little blue spray on it and it would not be because the spray is not poisonous this procedure is followed with every stem of fruit coming off that huge plantation first it is dipped five times in this barrel of chemical solution to loosen whatever spray might remain on the fruit then it is swung over and dipped eight times more in this barrel of fresh running water which leaves it absolutely clean the last time I was down here I bought a whole stem of fruit size of this one for 26 cents down on the dark could go peep-toe this endless chain of men carry the stems of fruit from the padded railway cars over to the loading belt which takes them down into the hold of the ship which will bring them to the United States and so we finally reach the Panama Canal the first automobile ever to cover so much of Mexico and Central America on the ground it has been five months since we left home and here we haven't even touched South America yet but we will far we're headed for Cape Horn however reaching the Panama Canal is a tremendous event for us so we decide to celebrate it in proper fashion with military permission and a US Army Major for escort we drive out near Gamboa and there with the world-famous ditch as a backdrop kenneth goes down dips up a can full of water brings it back and with boisterous shouts of laughter we douse it over the car as we brush the water from our clothes we say more solemnly when we reach Magellan straits we'll give it a real christening but now the job is only half done so we invite you to get film number two of this trip rugged Road to Cape Horn and continue with us for the last half of our Hemisphere adventure and education this automobile trip down the route of what one day will be the greatest highway in the world from the United States to Magellan straits and Cape Horn [Music]