A Night Out on the Villiage?

Since the last episode of the blog we have managed to live 4 days on what has been termed the "Hanukkah tank" as we expected it to run dry the morning of the 15th and it only just gave up the ghost this afternoon. Not quite 8 nights like the Maccabees, but our own little miracle. We just switched over to our 2nd tank which holds 55 gallons, so we are really hoping for rain tonight, but one of the Kunas in the villiage we visited this afternoon promised it would rain at about 10:00 pm....perfect.

We spent the last few days in Green Island. We were in a beautiful little anchorage, very protected, with white sandy beaches surrounding us. Arround the corner we found an excellent snorkle on the outside of the reef with about a 40 to 45 foot wall. I managed to free-dive down to about 40 feet, but reality was the platau at about 6 to 10 feet was the best, so we didn't bother scuba-diving the wall portion.

Today we sailed down to Isla Tigre, really the furthest west (and most western) traditional Kuna Villiage. Clearly they are more used to tourists and judging by the size of some of the teenagers playing soccer, they are of much more mixed blood as there is no way there are any pure kunas that big. Tonight we will head into the island for dinner at the local resturaunt to be followed by traditional Kuna Dancing. This is the real reason for our visit to this island as they are available to dance on Sunday nights for a reasonable fee. Dinner ashore will be a treat as well, but not having to do dishes will be the best part.

If we don't get rain tonight we will head into Rio Azucar on Monday and fill up before heading out to the Holandes for the week. We pick up Meg and Bree next Monday morning. Bree will have parts for the watermaker so we can get back to more than just fresh water rinses.

Late Update: Dinner was an excellent seafood creole like dish with octopus & lobster served over rice and lentils with an excellent salad. Then the dance group did four dances (The dance of the bird, dance of the conquistadors, unnammed dance, and dance of the crab). The music was particularly cool as it was reed flutes played by the male dancers with maraca percussion by the women. Very square dancy with lots of crossing and other patterns. For the final dance the reed flutes were replaced by crab claws again played as a flute....very cool. A lot of kids came out for the show and had a ton of fun with the people taking photos, with one little boy running arround with one of the backpacker girl's camera snapping pictures of everything. We also learned some Kuna, but all I remember is that thank you is pronounced "New Gambia". I am sure I am butchering it and it isn't spelled anything like that, but that is how I can remember.

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