Today we are up a wonderful little river to visit a Wounaan village. They charge you $5 to visit the village for 3 days. That is per adult. Children are free. Once you have paid your fee you are free to wander the village as you please. There is a central hut where they will put on a market if you are interested. The baskets here have fewer animals, and more geometric shapes. Also, the woodcarvings are much better, and the ... I can’t remember what it is called, but it is a seed from a palm tree, almost as hard as rock. They carve cute little animals into it and paint them with unbelievable detail.
They have a restaurant (a hut that has a table) where you can get a meal. When we asked if we could have dinner tonight they said no, there was not enough time to make dinner. Tomorrow would be better. We told them we would not be here tomorrow evening; they asked if rice with chicken would be okay. We said yes, and another boat (Grace) that came up the river with us said they would like to come too.
We headed back to the boat to put out a second anchor, as the channel is not wide and we did not want to swing into the side at night. While we were putting out the second anchor, another boat called Alba (3 of them came up the river) decided the holding was not good enough and headed down stream where the channel was deeper, wider, and offered better holding. We smiled and waived as they passed, and thought to ourselves “amateurs". That is when we notice we too we dragging. Up came the anchor, and we too were in search of some place with a little more water.
We found a nice place with close to 20 feet of water. Dropped anchor, set it, and hurried off for dinner. On our way up stream we passed Windsong as they went in search of deeper water. We arrived at the dock along with the people from Grace, and were met by the village "tourist director" who told us Grace would be on dry ground in a few hours. Naturally they shot back to their boat to head for deeper water too. By this time it was getting hard to get a reading over 15 feet anywhere. In the time from when we anchored till we got to the dock the water had fallen 5 feet and was moving fast. One guess put it at 6 knots.
Dinner was great, rice with chicken. The chicken was in a fantastic sauce made of tomatoes, celery, and other veggies. Not sure what, but it was good. The pots were left on the table and we were told to help our selves if we wanted more. It was so good we pretty much finished it off. During dinner we got to watch a nice lightning storm come in over the mountains. Made for a great dinner and at $4 per person, quite affordable.
After dinner we got out our flashlights and headed home. Courage was driving and I handled the light. We were speeding along at about 10kts plus the 5 or so from the river so we made good time. The light would usually reflect back off the logs so we only hit a few small ones. When we got back to the boat the water was down to 7 feet, and the sides were closing in. We sat there watching the Fathometer as it slowly ticked off the inches. When it hit 4 feet we knew we were aground.
When the tide started coming in, I took the boat hook and pushed us off the riverbank so we could turn around and sit properly. As I write this I can tell we are once again afloat and things are as they should be. Next time perhaps we will try to 25 feet of water...
I am happy to report that even though we are only 50 feet from the jungle, there have been no sightings of mosquitoes. Strange, perhaps they had their fill already?
Goodnight all,
Loyal
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