Day 5. Embera Village and Playa Blanca.

Discover the Panama Jungles. Spend the next two nights on the Beach.

Leave your rainforest hotel and travel the first part of the morning on the Chagres River. Inmerse yourself in the jungle for a trip that will take you to one of the hidden Embera Villages located along the river banks. 

Shorts, T-shirt, sandals or sneakers are suggested. Moskito repellent should be handy while in the Village, or you can also wear long pants, however the weather would  be hot. Bring cameras, binoculars and some cash in case that you are interested in purchasing some of the crafts that are made by the Embera artisans who are known for their beautiful woven baskets and carvings in cocobolo wood and tagua nut.

The Embera people were originally semi-nomadic and survived  as hunters and fishermen in wide areas of Panama, mainly the Darien jungle and the Amazonian Colombia where they were formerly known as the Choco tribe.

When Chagres National Park was founded in 1984 to protect its watershed,  several groups of indigenous people moved to the region from remote parts of the forest and organized themselves in small communities of 5 to 20 houses. Today, there are approximately 10 different villages on this part of the Chagres River. 

Once they migrated to the protected areas they were not allowed to hunt. Instead, they found new ways subsisting by growing their own crops (yucca, plantain), fishing and later tourism and as wood carvers, and crafts makers and weavers. The Chocó have their own form of government and live by their own rules.

The women wear brightly colored cloth wrapped at the waist as a skirt and hey decorate their head usually with hibiscus flowers.

They also wear silver necklaces and silver earrings on special occasions, many of the necklaces being made of very old silver coins that they have inherited.

Men wear a loincloth of colorful cotton called guayuco and band of plastic beads across the chest.

Men and women paint their bodies with geometric patterns with a dye made from the jagua fruit, mainly for special celebrations. The pigment remains in the skin between 12 to 15 days.

Their celebrations include music from flutes and percussion instruments, and dances that are inspired in the movements of animals from the jungle.

Their houses, composed of a single room with no walls, stand on large posts set in the ground, and have thatched roof made from palm leaves.

This visit to this small Embera Village will open your mind to a completely new and amazing hidden world. Learn about their  art, medicine, dances, music and history. Gather with the people of the village at their community house for unique cultural experience.

You will have time of your own to walk this tiny village, to take picture and why not, to get a 12 day Embera tattoo!

After the visit, get back on the boats to the bus for a couple of hours drive to your beach resort at Playa Blanca or White Beach were you will spend the next to nights!

Relax and enjoy at one of the favorite beaches on the Pacific of Panama.