VISIT TO AN INDIAN VILLAGE IN PANAMA

Kathy and I did a day-long trip with other cruisers by motorised dugout canoe to an Indian village up the Chagras River. This river is the source of all the water used in the Panama Canal; instead of flowing directly to the sea, it now first creates an artificial lake from which the water for the locks is drawn.

The native people, the Imbarra Drua, are a small splinter group that moved over from the main tribe near the Columbian border. Head-hunters originally, they were notorious for their ferocity. when they arrived in this area as late as the 1960s, they drove out the existing tenants who moved over to the San Blas Islands on the Caribbean coast.

It seems a joke, but we were told that, since sometimes cruiseship guests come to visit them, the cruise line operators insist that the people cover their genitals. The native people would otherwise simply wear nothing that wasn't just decoration.