Visit to the Embara

Friday, August 25, 2017

Our flights to Panama City were uneventful, and we arrived at our hotel in the late evening last night.  We were up and ready to go, and met Christian at 9:00.  There’s just one activity on the schedule today, a visit to one of the seven remaining indigenous tribes in Panama, the Embara.  They have a number of villages along the Chagres River, mostly in the Chagres National Park.  They’re not easy to get to.

We left downtown Panama City and drove for 1 ½ hours over gradually worsening roads, until the pavement ran out and the road was so poor that we went only about 10 mph. 

  

Ultimately, we arrived at the dock where the dugouts of the Embara are parked.  They’re made of a single log, hollowed out, with a blunt stern and an outboard motor attached.  We climbed down a muddy trail to the dugout, and boarded:

We could easily see how the dugouts were handmade, and it appeared that they added a strip of wood at the gunwale to deepen them:

  

The current in the river was swift and strong, and we went against the current for about 45 minutes upstream (click on the arrow for video): 

The villages consist of a collection of thatched-roof houses on stilts (for water and critter protection—there are jaguars here): 

And the houses have no internal or external walls:

 The thatch is very tight, and perfectly waterproof, as we later found out:

  

The village we visited, Drua, is one of three which the government allows to accept visitors.  According to our guide, this makes it a very desirable village to live in, as the money they collect from fees to visit, along with the sale of handmade items makes it far more prosperous than other Embara villages.  Only those born or married into the village are permitted to live there.  The population of Drua is 106.  The Embara women were dressed in their finest for our visit:

 Note that the men and the women have extensive painted tattoos which are not permanent.  We had one of the artists tattoo Oren:

 We were served a lunch of fresh fish from the river and plantain, following which the women danced for us (I’m not sure this really is traditional):

And the men played music.  The flute is made of bamboo:

Finally it was time for shopping.  As we began to look at the handicrafts, thunder and lightening broke out:

 A torrential jungle downpour began and didn’t stop.  Just buckets and buckets of rain.  The river turned brown and ran even faster.  We put on our raincoats and went back to the dugout where we set out downstream (going much faster than we did upstream).  We were soaked to the core and the rain hit us with force as we sped with the current.  We finally reached the place where our van was parked, and climbed up the very slippery muddy riverbank to the parking place.  We rode the 90 minutes back to our hotel sopping wet, and as I write this, our we clothes are draped over every possible surface in the hotel room.  But we’re dry now.

Off to dinner.  Tomorrow is a day on the Panama Canal.