Visitors!

I had my first site visitors! Their name's were Aja and Alex, both girls that live in other areas of the Darien. Aja lives in Meteti (the regoinal "hub" if you choose to call it that) and teaches English while Alex is a Sustainable Agriculture Systems volunteer that lives in a small community of roughly 80 people.

We met up at the bus terminal in Meteti around 6 a.m. to take a chiva (small van thing in this case) to Puerto Quimba. I should just mention in advance that arriving into Taimati almost never goes smoothly. We were to wait in Puerto Quimba for the boat which I hoped would just show up on time and smoothly take us straight to site, but as we waited some people that worked around there found us and said "Are you the gringos going to Taimati?" (in Spanish of course) which we confirmed for them. They let us know that the boat would not be coming here today and that they were in Las Palmas waiting for us because they had some motor trouble...of course. We took the next boat out to Las Palmas which was simple enough and went smoothly. Once there we came across some of the Taimati people, not particularly tricky since there is only one road in Las Palmas, and they informed us that we would be leaving around 2 p.m. This gave us about 6 hours to ponder the deeper mysteries of life for instance: how do so many taxi drivers make a living in a town with only one road...seriously there are several taxis there and it doesn't take that long to walk anywhere on the single road. Luckily waits are always nicer when you have friends around to pass the time with.

As fate would have it 2 p.m. came and went and we were still in Las Palmas. The motor had been fixed but from what I could pick up we were waiting around now because the sun was hot. Albeit the sun WAS hot, but in a site where arrival depends strongly on the tides the temperature should not be causing delay. Closer to 3 p.m. was our actual leave time. We had a small motor and were burdened with many goods so it took a decent amount of time to get into site, and when we finally got there....well we didn't quite get there... instead we hit ground about a quarter mile out. This had happened before but the other time we were on the incoming tide so we waited and came in with the tide. This time we were on an outgoing tide, so the best option was to abandon ship and walk ourselves and luggage into town through the mud. We made it and in high enough spirits just in time to watch a beautiful sunset from the beach.

We spent the next two days hanging out in Taimati and Matt's neighbor site of Cemaco just passing time, talking with the people, and having fun. We had a rousing game of PIG on the basketball court wherein I held a commanding lead until the girls realized they could take easy shots and just incorporate short dance moves just before the shot to force me to mimic them. This made me lose both the game, and probably a small amount of respect in the passing men's eyes.

The final night we all spent in Cemaco with Matt and his host family and the girls left early that morning to go to another site to attend the anniversary of the Comarca Embera-Woonan (Embera-Woonan being the names of two indigenous peoples and Comarca denoting a large parcel of land like a reservation). That is what brought them through our sites in the first place, a desire to visit a few sites on their way to this anniversary. Matt and I also wanted to attend this anniversary as a cultural event, but the main office sent us a message to say that we were not allowed and would "receive a stern talking to" if we did go. Trying to stay off the office-trouble-radar we of course stayed home.

It was a lot of fun to have visitors. I look forward to whoever may get the chance to visit me in the future and to the other sites I will get the chance to explore.