Up a River without much water - Up Rio Sabana

Made it up another river, not as much water in this one!!!  Met up with 3 other boats and we all came up to check out another traditional village.  There are 7 indigenous tribes.  We were at an Embera village, La Chunga, (you can YouTube dances, etc.) and now are at a Wounaan village.  This is less rustic - power lines, streetlights, streets, garbage on the ground, cell phones, etc.  Again, they were nice people with rugged housing, traditional dress, but not as natural and authentic.
  
The Wounaan and Embera villages are parallel communities in housing, clothing, etc.  The difference is in language and their dance style.  Some anthropologists put them together due to their similarities.  We noticed that their baskets and plates were more geometric shapes rather than nature.  The Embera village has birds, flowers, turtles, butterflies, leaves, etc. as their subject matter.

Four of us went in for a traditional dinner, said it was great, rice and chicken.  I stayed on the boat with the kids.  In the meanwhile the other 3 boats had issues dragging their anchors and were getting low on water so went down the river past us.  We are almost at low tide and almost out of water under our rudders.  Hoping for swing tide soon.

We are thinking of leaving with the tides tomorrow afternoon and taking the other boats to La Chunga to visit.  That river is easier to settle in and the village is more native.  I was thinking of asking if we could buy the materials for a plate/basket and they could show us how to weave one.  It may be too complicated for us.  If we could get started, maybe we could finish it on the boat?  Innocence gave the girls shells as a gift last time we were there; I was thinking we should collect more.  Not so many seashells where they are and they seem to really like natural objects.

Cassidy had a big following of kids.  They loved the iPod.  She showed them pictures of themselves on it.  As we passed the school the kids were yelling out the window "Cass-i-dy” (sort of a chant, funny and cute).  Got a great video of her entertaining the kids on the boat with her iPod hooked up to the TV looking at distorted pictures of themselves and laughing.

Stopped at a small town called La Palma today and got a few food supplies.  Tried to resupply our popcorn, but no luck.  Only had microwave popcorn or animal feed dried corn.  Guess we have to wait for Panama City for that.  They have free Internet throughout La Palma, but by the time we re-anchored closer to town this morning and walked through town it was time to ride the tide up the river.  Tried to post a single picture to Facebook from our last week with no avail.  Made a 15 minute video and shared it with our buddy boats with a little cultural introduction and navigating the river knowledge for them with our night in La Palma. -- Unable to share that at this time also.  I narrowed down our 1300 pictures to the top 167 in a folder to upload.  Hard to cut it less, but maybe if you weren't there they may begin to look redundant.  Overall they were really a great people and we had a great visit.  I know Loyal gave you some details and soon I hope to write a blog with events and impressions.

Good night.  Will buzz La Palma tomorrow if we go to the other river.  Need to go out to sea, then across a mud flat to get back up.  If so, will try again to load some pictures.

Shannon