Panama was always going to be hard on the pioneering bike riders of Hemistour. The Darién Gap, a watery, roadless wilderness at the narrow waist of Central America, wasn’t just unrideable, it was extremely hazardous and potentially fatal. Alternately steep and swampy and one of the rainiest places on earth, the Darién is home to snakes, guerrillas, and outlaws—even the ride-every-mile mentality of June and Greg Siple would have to surrender to it.
Instead, right in the middle of their eighteen-thousand-mile spin from Anchorage, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, they’d pack their ten speeds and fly from the Canal Zone to the northernmost part of Colombia and resume their southward expedition there. But first, June needed to gird herself for an appearance on the Panamanian daytime talk show Sábados Con Martínez Blanco. Greg’s bike and gear had been stolen, and June, fresh from language immersion training in Guatemala, needed to plead in Spanish with the national television audience
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