The inaccessible Caribbean — no roads to the rest of Colombia, intact coral reefs in the Darien Gap jungle, and the last Colombian town before Panama
Capurgana is a small coastal town in the Uraba region of Choco department — on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, 18km south of the Panama border, in the Darien Gap (the 150km roadless jungle break in the Pan-American Highway between Turbo, Colombia and Yaviza, Panama). Capurgana has no road connection to the Colombian road network — accessible only by boat from Turbo (2-hour speedboat) or small aircraft. The coral reefs of the Capurgana-Sapzurro area are among the most intact on the Colombian Caribbean coast (road inaccessibility preventing the runoff that damaged reefs elsewhere). Sapzurro vi…
The Darien coast was territory of the Kuna (Guna) people — an indigenous people now primarily in the Kuna Yala islands of Panama, who maintained presence on both sides of the Colombia-Panama coastal border until the early 20th century. The forced settlement of Afro-Colombian communities in the Uraba coast during the banana boom created the mixed demographic of Capurgana today. The Darien Gap remained one of the most contested zones of the Colombian internal conflict until the 2016 FARC peace agreement, which is why Capurgana developed tourism only slowly despite its extraordinary natural envi…