There are some mediocre routes and some interesting routes.
I think a key tidbit not mentioned by the article, is to recommend for US and Europeans travelers the experience of ecosystem change by going from coastal (sea level), to paramo , to high Andes , and then back down to (dense) tropical jungle.
That ecosystem journey does not exist in North America, and its rare in the EU, except for maybe Switzerland (where you will not experience tropical jungle anyway).
Yet, the journey from coast to highland down to jungle, is available on all highways criscrossing the Andes!
You can do a similar journey in the US and Canada from sea level through temperate rainforest to alpine tundra on the Pacific coast. It's not quite the same as the Andes, but it's similar because of the structural similarities in how the Pacific rim formed.
You can experience all of those ecosystems - and more - just in Columbia if you choose to.
We did a lot of bussing around there couple years ago - none of them or as nice as these motor coaches! (We were generally not taking the longer routes though.)
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