A Wounaan community of around a hundred families, Boca de Lara, or Puerto Lara, is located on the banks of the Ríos Lara and Sabanas, less than an hour's pirogue ride from Santa Fe. It is also accessible by colectivo (US$1) via a road from the Pan-American Highway, which has replaced an old track that was once only accessible in the dry season. The village is renowned for its handicrafts, the sale of which is the inhabitants' main source of income. The women work for months to produce baskets(canastas) of rare finesse. The men, for their part, devote themselves to carving cocobolo and tagua with representations of forest animals: jaguars, frogs, sloths... Prices are fair, so don't haggle, out of respect for this precious work. Most of the men and women, children and elderly alike, are bare-chested and wear black body paint made from the berry of a tree called jagua. The women wear brightly-colored parumas inspired by the birds and butterflies of the forest. The forest provides the inhabitants with everything they need: fish, animals, medicinal plants, tree trunks for digging dugout canoes or building houses... Houses built in the traditional way: on stilts, to withstand the river's floods; wide-open, without obstructing neighbors' view, so that the air can circulate; and protected by pretty palm roofs. Access is gained by climbing a staircase carved from a log.The grassy driveway that rises from the river and crosses the village in a straight line is a reminder that, before it was a village, Boca de Lara was an American military base with an airstrip and radars. Installed in 1942 after the devastation of Pearl Harbor, the radars were intended to warn of a possible Japanese attack on the Canal. During the Cold War, the base was used as a CIA listening station... When General Omar Torrijos came to power in 1968, he forced the United States to vacate the site, which was well outside the Canal Zone. Shortly afterwards, in 1970, the Wounaans, who had been living nomadically along the rivers and isolated in family nuclei, agreed to regroup so that their children could attend school. The school was built in 1973, electricity and telephone service were brought in at the end of the 1990s, and an American mission even set up a computer center, which did not last long... Today, the village lives between tradition and modernity, but always in harmony with nature. With the help of Franco-Panaman Michel Puech, a traditional house has been built to accommodate small groups of tourists keen to discover the life of the locals and share in their daily routine: jagua tattooing, crafts, fishing, dancing... To get into the Boca Lara mood, immerse yourself in La Fille de Panamá or Tempête sur Panamá, two novels by Jean-Michel Thibault, who drew inspiration from this village for his descriptions of the jungle and the Indians.

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