We had landed on Playa de Muerto at the edge of the Darién Jungle, 40 miles from the Colombian border. Tall mountains blanketed in lush jungle rose up behind the palm-fringed beach. The jungle was so impenetrable that a 54-mile swath of it, called the Darién Gap, is the only break in the Pan-American Highway, a 30,000-mile network of roads stretching from Alaska to southern Argentina. No road reaches here.
Playa de Muerto was one of eight stops on our Cruise West voyage from Los Sueños on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast to Colón on Panama’s Caribbean coast via the Panama Canal. Since the 100-passenger Pacific Explorer could duck into smaller bays and shallower waterways than the “big rig’’ liners, we could visit a private botanical garden, a tiny tropical island, and this traditional village. In fact, Cruise West is the only cruise company that stops here.
“This is not a tour, it is a life experience. At least that’s how it always is for me,’’ said Karla Taylor, a Costa Rican guide and one of the ship’s exploration leaders. “This group of Emberá hasn’t had a lot of exposure to outsiders, so we’ll be sharing a real cultural experience.’’
“To give you an idea of what the Emberá are like, they use the same word for ‘brother’ and ‘friend’ - ‘yaba,’ ’’ added Fernández.
We spent the afternoon visiting with the Emberá, who still follow their traditional way of life, hunting, spear-fishing, and growing what they need to survive. Groups of girls and women performed traditional dances under the large palapa, an open-sided thatched pavilion, and invited us to join them while several men played bamboo flutes and deerskin drums. They gave us tours of their thatched homes, which are on stilts to protect against high tides, and showed us how to press sugar cane, then challenged our crew to a competitive but friendly soccer match.
Before heading back to the ship, we had a chance to buy colorful, intricate baskets so tightly woven they could hold water and cocobolo carvings made from a red hardwood, and get temporary tattoos made from a dye that comes from the local jagua fruit.
