(January 2, 2014. Somewhere in the Darien jungle.)
On December 29, we left out little island heaven (Isla Esprirtu Santo) with about five other boats, and headed into the jungle. Our objective was to go eight miles up the Rio Sambu, which is right inside the southernmost bay of Panama, right near the Colombian border.
It is VERY remote here. There are no roads, no roads at all leading from Panama to Colombia. The jungle is so dense and swampy that there has never been a road built through here, not even local ones. The Pan-American Highway, that begins in Alaska, ends here in the jungle and anyone wanting to go from Panama to Colombia needs to take a boat or a plane. There is no way to drive there. That is why there is a brisk business in ferrying backpackers from Panama to South America (usually on the Caribbean side) as there is no other cheap way for them to get there. I was astonished to discover that all these people with crew were not paying the crew, rather, the crew were paying the boat owners for the ride, as well as buying their own food AND helping with the boat work as well. Sweet deal for the boat owner! People even do that all the way to the south Pacific.
So anyway, this other boat we have been hanging around with here, decided to take this river trip and recruited five more of us to join them. Getting here was hairy, to say the least. Not in a violent, storm tossed way, but there are long mud flats from the mouth of the river leading to the bay, and one has to cross them at exactly slack high tide, or one will run aground. The longest drafts (which is how far into the water your keel extends) belonged to us and one other boat. The lead boat is a large catamaran, and those boats will float in about ten inches of water, so they led the way, calling depths out to the rest of us via VHF radio as we carefully motored our vessels along. The water is muddy, so you can't see into it to see how deep you are. We brought up the rear, with the other deep draft vessel just in front of us. (A possible nail in the coffin for the Mickelson 50 I can't get out of my mind - that sucker draws seven feet at least, where we are only six.) The boat ahead of us did end up running aground, if only for a couple of minutes until she was able to work free and get into (slightly) deeper water. Because we were just behind them, we headed a bit to port and managed to avoid the really shallow spot. After that, we managed to get us all into the river, where the channels narrows and the river itself gets plenty deep.
Going down this river was like being in a jungle movie. In fact, the first night we were here we watched "The African Queen" and just hoped neither of us would have to pull the boat through the weeds like that. MJ is a lot bigger and heavier than the Queen! But it is early morning now, and all I can hear other than this computer keyboard and the fan in Mike's room is the sound of birds and bugs, all yelling their heads off. Yesterday at dusk a tree across from where we are anchored was filled up with toucans. We could tell what they were by the silhouette of their bills against early evening sky. There was another tree with roosting herons, cormorants, and another bird we were not sure of. There are supposed to be crocodiles here, and I have no doubt that there are, but we haven't seen any yet. The water is muddy with a strong current, and the other day we awoke to discover there were logs and tree trunks and branches and vines and palm fronds and all sorts of things wrapped around the bow of the boat, actually pushing us and disrupting our anchor from its resting spot. We had been shoved a back about 200 yards. It took us about an hour or an hour and a half to get the mess cleared. We were unable to just push it aside from the deck using the boat pole, and ended up in the dinghy, shoving and poking with our hands, leaning into the water to get a grip and shove everything aside back into the current. Luckily this water is full of natural organic matter, not horrid crap from the city or off of other boats. We had to use a rope and lasso some of the logs, and then use the dinghy engine to pull them out from under. There were logs underneath logs. I have never seen such a mess in my life. We figured out that because we had anchored in a slight bend in the river, we were collecting everything that drifted along. And since the river banks are entirely made from mud with trees that seem to fall in all the time, there is a lot of flotsam. So as soon as we had the mess cleaned up, we moved the boat to a different location. Although i kept waking up every time I heard anything brush along the hull, when it got light and I couldn't stand it any more, I got up and discovered we had made a good decision and there were no problems - just a few vine-ish things draped like ribbons along the anchor chain. It was beautiful to wake up to.
There is a village here, and we have been visiting it. You can either take the dinghy up to a dock like structure, tie it off, and then walk for about a mile or so (I think, I am not good at gauging distances and height and things like that, but Mike said he thought the walk was about a mile) to reach the village itself. The route to the village begins with a raised wooden boardwalk that crosses over a swamp. The vegetation cannot be imagined - you have to see it for yourself. Verdant does not begin to do it justice. There were bird of paradise plants at least ten feet tall, with flowers bigger than my head. The boardwalk is suspended and it a little rickety, so the only problem was I had to watch my feet as I went along to avoid missing boards and generally trying not to trip. I am clumsy under the best of circumstances, so this sort of thing is an extra challenge for me. After the boardwalk ends, there is a flat, neatly trimmed path that runs the rest of the way. I would say the boardwalk makes up about 3/4 of the entire distance. The walk is a wonderful one - as I said, it is flat and well kept, so you can look around. In fact, it is so well kept that I could have gone barefoot, rather than in flip flops, as long as I kept a careful watch for leaf cutter ants and step around them. The bird sightings could not have been better, and the birds are not as skittish as birds usually are.
The village is set in a clearing that reminds me of a football field, sort of, without the lines. They have a large thatched structure with no walls lined with benches that acts as a community center. The houses are wall-less structures up on stilts, and everyone cooks over fires. There is no power. There are chickens running all over the place, as well as some skinny dogs and a few pigs, but the pigs did not come into the living space. The women wear wrap around skirts in bright colors, and the men wear these loin cloth things. Everyone wears beads, some with long strands they double over their chests like bandoliers. They also paint themselves up with this dark blue dye, which is not permanent. I have planning to have it done before I leave, and I will take a picture of it. (By the way, I do have pictures of all this stuff, and when I am in some semblance of normal internet range, I will post them.
Well, this is almost too long for the radio, so I have to get going. I will continue with the jungle adventure as its unfolds.
"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience." (Sir Francis Bacon)
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