Besides the Marina there is just Jungle around here, which is quite exciting, with all the animals they have in there. The Marina itself has good facilities, even a pool! Never had that before. To go shopping they organise every day a bus to go to Colon, which is on the other side of the bay, so you have to cross the locks every time which can get a bit lenghty as you sometimes have to wait about half an hour until a couple of the big ships have gone through the locks. Colon is apparently not a very save city, so its great they organise this bus to drop you off and pick you back up.
While we were here, you get your boat measured and all the forms filled in for the transit. Then you have to wait about 4 days until they can schedule you in. This is a very busy time at the moment. They work at the canal 24/7, 365 days a year. Never stop!
To kill time waiting, besides school work we went of course jungle exploring. Around here used to be an american army training camp in the second world war, with all families living here as well. All this has been now abandoned and is just ruined, the jungle taking over again. To go through all this is very creepy.... Especially when you hear the howler monkeys in the background! And today we found out, there is actually a black jaguar living around here, hanging around the old battery places! But sadly (or maybe not so sadly) we didn't see him.
But we saw lots of white faced capoochy (don't know how to spell this) monkeys, so cute! And lots of black howler monkeys, which you can hear already in the morning when you wake up, lying in bed. They all jump around in the trees, so acrobatic. Fantastic. We also saw some sloths, hanging lazily in the trees. And lots of beautiful birds. We just enjoyed sitting down and watching all these animals.
On Sunday we did a tour to the Embera Indian Village. A tribe around here, where you can visit to see how they live. I always feel a bit bad doing stuff like that, but they themselves have chosen this as an income for their community, they get part of the money from the tour.
It was very interesting and they really still live like that and don't just put it on for the tourists. The Embera tribe came a couple of hundred years ago from Colombo and fought the Kuna indians for this area. The Embara indians but used the very poisones frogs around here to fight the Kuna. There is one frog here, when you just wipe the tip of the dart over its back, the dart is deadly poisoned for 2 years! (And you think Australia has poisones animals!) So they won and the Kuna went to live at the San Blas islands.
We were shown what they do, had a nice lunch of fish and plantain (the bananas you use for cooking, we love them!), watched some dances and music and of course could buy the local craft. All in all a nice day with a drive to and from in a (air-conditioned!) bus, to see lots of the country and hear about its history.
On the way we saw some sloths in the trees!
Lisa and Ben took part in the dance. Ben towering over everybody!
The village
The last two days we spend with shopping trips to the supermarket to start stocking up for our trip to Galapagos and beyond....
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