Darien I

Last week was Semana Santa or Easter Week so we had a week off from work. I decided to go to the Darien Province of Panama with Greg, a friend from work.

We left right after work on Friday, catching the bus to San Jose. We intended to catch the bus to Panama City that night but it was full of travelers taking advantage of the holidays. We ended up staying in a hostel in San Jose and tried to set out the next morning. The buses were full in the morning as well but we managed to get a bus to the border. The border crossing went much quicker this time since the lines were short and we didn't need to get our bags checked. We hopped on a bus headed for Panama City, arriving in the city at midnight. We found a hostel where I had stayed before but unfortunately it was full so we were forced to stay in the Casa Grande, which is overpriced at $3 a night. The next day we caught a bus to the Darien. It was 6 hours of bumpy roads in a packed bus so we were happy to get out. We then took a half hour minivan bus ride down to the nearby port. All through the day we were constantly stopped by police and army posts and they took our passports and wrote down all our information. The Darien Province is almost completely jungle and Colombian guerrilla troops and drugs are fairly common. There have been quite a number of foreigners being taken hostage and searching for these lost people is extremely difficult and expensive for the Panamanian army. This means they try to keep a close track of all foreigner movements in the province so they have a better idea of where to look. A week before, the army had arrested 6 FARC guerrillas in a river near where we were going and the FARC released a statement warning that they would get revenge. So the army was being extra careful. Luckily, the river we were going to was considered safe so we had little trouble getting through the checkpoints.

At the port we hopped on a motor boat and headed out into nearly unspoilt jungle to the capital of the Darien, La Palma. The boat travelled down the estuary of a river towards the ocean and the waves and gentle rolling hills reminded me of canoeing in the lakes of northern Ontario, only with jungles trees rather than pine trees. After a quick 30 minute trip we arrived at the docks of La Palma. It is a one street town and reminded me of towns such as Bastimientos and Tortuguero, small towns revolving around boat travel. La Palma actually did have a road that led about 30 km to a nearby town but it was not connected to the rest of the Panamanian road system. After asking around we found a nice hostel run by a friendly grandmotherly lady that everbody in town called 'Maestra', the spanish word for teacher. We were the only foreigners staying that night but we ran into an American eating supper there and he had spent a long time in La Palma helping to build a sail boat.

The next morning we got up early and headed down to the dock to try and find a boat to the Sambu River, our original destination. We had no idea how much it would cost and the guide book indicated that it would be more than $100 to get somebody to go. However talking to 'Maestra' and other locals we learned that it would be better to take a boat to the town of Garachiné, which was much closer to the river. We managed to learn at the docks that there was a boat to Garachiné on the Monday and it showed up after only a few minutes. Unfortunately the boat wasn't returning to Garachiné until 11am so we had the morning to kill. Back at the hostel we ran into the American again eating breakfast and he invited us to see the boat. The boat was built by an American former Peace Corps volunteer who decided to return to La Palma and build a boat with the Indians of the Darien. Here is the website for the boat. They sailed the boat all the way through the Panama Canal, the Caribbean and the Eastern Coast of the States up to Maine. They brought as crew members seven Indians who had never been outside of the Darien and it must have been quite an experience for them. The purpose of the trip was to raise awareness of the Embera Indians in the Darien as well as indigenous people throughout the world. Right now the boat is in dry dock and the owner in the States is trying to raise money to refurbish the boat and put a better engine in it. They plan to sail it to Europe for the next trip. We also saw the shop where they built the boat and it was still being used continuously by the local carpenters. Soon it was almost 11 and we had to head back to the town dock and catch our boat.