Adventurer Daniel Eggington sets out, third time lucky, to cross the lesser-known pacific side of the impenetrable jungle connecting Colombia to Panama, known as the Darien Gap.

Hear his tales of river crossings, being abandoned, snakes and scorpions, not to mention a meeting with an individual from an illegal armed group, along the way.

How did the Panamanian authorities react? Why did he make this journey?

This and the Colombia News Brief from Emily Hart.

Hallo and welcome to Colombia Calling – I’m Emily Hart and this week we’re discussing peace and statehood with two expert researchers – Dr Gwen Burnyeat and Dr Andrei Gomez-Suarez.

Burnyeat is a junior research fellow in anthropology at Oxford University, with over a decade working on peace and politics in Colombia, as well as author of numerous books on the topic. Gomez-Suarez is a senior research fellow at the Centre of Religion, Reconciliation and Peace at the University of Winchester, co-founder of peace-building group Rodeemos el Diálogo, and – also – author of numerous books.

We’ll be talking about peace and peace-ability - the Colombian government’s attempts to communicate and convince around the referendum on the 2016 peace deal, and the long shadow which the failings of that work has cast.

Sharing their experiences both in research and in advocacy, Gwen and Andrei will be telling us about the faces the Colombian state has shown, and needs to show, in front of its citizens, the failings of a purely rational approach, and the conclusions of Gwen’s new book - "The Face of Peace: Government Pedagogy amid Disinformation in Colombia."

And to round off the show, Gwen will give us a reading from the Prologue.

Simon Faulkner is a lecturer of International Tourism Management at University College Birmingham. As an expert in the travel industry from an academic standpoint, we are fortunate to have him on the Colombia Calling podcast to discuss his recent trip to Colombia, which included the Colombian Caribbean island of Providencia.

We discuss what he saw on the ground in Providencia, how the island is coping after Hurrican Iota left a massive trail of destruction in its wake in 2020. Has there been any effective reconstruction on the island and what is being done?

But not only does Faulkner discuss Providencia, because he also travelled Colombia with his teenage son, and so we get to hear about his experiences in the country travelling with children. Is Colombia a child friendly destination, what can be done with children in Colombia and how does Faulkner see Colombia marketing herself in the future?

Tune in for this and for Colombia news from journalist Emily Hart.

Joining us from Lund University where she teaches at the Graduate School 2030, Jesica López is a Bogotana on a mission to investigate and share how we can work together to understand land transformation and halt deforestation in the Amazon.

The overarching aim of of Lopez' study is to improve our systems' approach understanding the mechanisms behind the land use transformation. More specifically, the cumulative effects of extensive cattle ranching into tropical forests in protected areas, in order to implement effective and integrative land use planning in the northwest of Amazon region of Colombia.

We discuss the power behind the cattle farming union, Chiribiquete and why it is so important, some of the good news being done on the ground and how we can start to make this all part of the normal conversation for conservation not only in Colombia but also in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru as well.

Colombia News Brief by Emily Hart.