A hike across the divide

About a month ago, I went on incredible three day hike from the top of the panamanian mountains down the famous cricamola river and to the caribbean. The cricamola is the river where the majority of the ngabe people living in the province of bocas del toro retreated to when the spaniards came. Later, many ngabes migrated from the river to the rest of the Bocas del Toro province in the 1950s and 60s when the banana company sent boats up the river to look for workers.

So three girlfriends and I and a wonderful ngabe woman from Kat's community set out on this adventurous hike. We started up in the cold windy rainy mountains, hiking downward, following the river and watching it grow from little creeks to a rushing river with rapids and later to a wide meandering river. We had to cross the river walking over and over, and then later when it got to big, by pieced together bridges and by ziplines.

(daily commute to work anyone?)


We saw the culture changing from the ngabe style of living in the reservation on the pacific side (with nagwa dresses and round houses on the ground) to the ngabe bocas style (with bocas house dresses and raised square wood houses).



We stayed in schools and houses along the way. Many were curious about why we were there, some openly welcoming and others retreatingly scared. We met kind old men who yelled out to us in ngabere, pleased that we could speak their language a little. We met inventive young farmers, excited little children, and a wonderful old women who invited us to be her children for life. We even met a young ngobe boy in charge of a zipline crossing who was more like a troll in his demeanor. A few asked whether our backpacks were full of money. Unfortunately we only had dirty clothes and cans of tuna fish to show for. But it makes you think of the image of tourism and what are effective ways of supporting communities along the way. These communities are incredibly isolated. In order to get out to go to larger towns to get merchandise for their stores, some would have to walk for a day and a half and then take a long boat or truck ride. We saw families on their way out to visit other family or to buy more merchandise.

(Kat and Kate in their Ngobe hiking clothes)


(Yes that is a pig crossing the river)

I think my two favorite memories were at our first zipline crossing, watching parents send their children across in a chakra hung from the zipline and later seeing a young women in a traditional pink nagwa flying across the the beautiful turquoise river on the zipline. It was an amazing hike, challenging, a few sicknesses along the way in our group, both overall, incredible. When we arrived in Kankintu, the ngabe city in the jungle, we were amazed by the sidewalks that seemed to appear out of the no where. It is a small city 5 hours up river by boat or three days walking but has a small university, restaurants and lots of people. The night we got there, it was the day that women were in Kankintu to collect their welfare checks. At 8:30pm there were still women in line. Those that had already received their checks were with their husbands, browsing the different street vendors that set up on the side of the sidewalk with flashing lights selling everything from radios to undies and shoes. It was quite a sight. The next morning at 5:00am, we left in a big dug out canoe headed to the ocean, we even got a coffee break halfway down river. Incredible.