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What is the meaning of:

La ruta es muy pesada

In the documentary Andes Magicos one of the truck drivers describes the route between a city and a remote Peruvian village as muy pesada.

La ruta es muy pesada, transitada.

What is the meaning of a 'very heavy route'?

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3 Answers 3

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Within the context of transit, it's used when a road has few lanes or has a lot of vehicular congestion.
In other contexts it's used when a village for example is located high above sea level.

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I'm not sure if pesada have got a special meaning in Perú but you can interpret it in that sentence as one of these taken from the DRAE

pesado/a

  1. adj. Tardo o muy lento.

  2. adj. Molesto, enfadoso, impertinente.

  3. adj. Aburrido, que no tiene interés.

@fedorqui points

  1. adj. Duro, violento, insufrible, difícil de soportar.

It may be but I interpret the sentence as

La ruta es muy pesada, [porque está muy] transitada

I've highlighted the most probable one: muy lento. If the road is narrow, in bad conditions and has got high traffic, you may spend a lot of time to travel it. You move along it at a slow [lento] speed.

Either way, we can not translate it as "heavy" in that context.

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    Yo apostaría por 11. adj. Duro, violento, insufrible, difícil de soportar.. Así lo he oído usar por colombianos, si bien no lo encuentro en el Damer.
    – fedorqui
    Oct 31, 2019 at 7:50
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    Puede ser, la añado, habría que ver el documental. Quizás la 7 "molesto" sería un grado menor de "insufrible". Yo interpreto la frase como "La ruta es muy pesada porque está muy transitada". La violencia y la dureza no aparecerían.
    – RubioRic
    Oct 31, 2019 at 8:13
  • In this context I think 11 is most appropriate because the route is steep, narrow, and very dangerous, with little room for oncoming traffic to pass. The meaning to me seems to be a combination of defintion 11 and the response luis199230 gave.
    – David Sopko
    Nov 1, 2019 at 20:26
  • It should be no ambiguity, since the question includes the quoted statement "la ruta es muy pesada, transitada". The flow is slow and difficult (heavy) due to the number of vehicles on it
    – ipp
    Nov 1, 2019 at 20:28
  • @user2325442 I don't get how you remove the ambiguity so easily. That word have 15 different meanings. How do you know which one has been employed by the speaker?
    – RubioRic
    Nov 4, 2019 at 9:58
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"La ruta es muy pesada" sounds odd to me because the verb "ser" would indicate that being congested is a permanent feature of the road. In that case, I'd use a demonstrative or some name for the road to be clearly identified as the one that has a lot of traffic (as opposed to others that don't):

  • Esta ruta es muy pesada.

  • La ruta entre Lima e Iquitos es muy pesada.

Otherwise, my feeling is that "está" would sound more natural, to mean that the road currently used is congested at the moment:

  • La ruta está muy pesada.
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