Alex opened the paper in the middle (as men do) and I was reading an article that was screaming at me over his shoulder. I asked “are you reading what I am reading?” and he said “wedding 18″. We read on and looked for some contact information but were directed to the front page…which was missing! We ran back to the school in the rain clutching the previous weeks paper and searched the internet for any information we could glean from the article.
It was a story about a small Embera tribe that live deep in the Chagres National Park who receive only a few visitors a year. The tours are arranged by an American lady called Anne.

“Anne Gordon was an animal trainer for film & TV for over 20 years when she was hired in early 2004, to work on a film “The End of the Spear” to be shot in the jungles of Panama.

The production company had contracted to use the Embera’ tribe as their actors for this real life story. Anne got to know many of the Embera’ people and fell in love with their quality of life and how warm and open hearted they are. And as fate would have it she is now married to one of the Embera’ men from the village of Embera’ Puru.

Anne has been fully accepted as one of the family and tribe by Otniel’s family and tribe members”

She has such a unique story and of course the Embera Peru tribe live in an unusual place and have a very different way of living so we just had to give it a try. We found Anne online and immediately got in touch just before we had our first Spanish lesson.
We excitedly sat down to our first 4 hour lesson, the adrenalin still buzzing from finding our potential 18th wedding location. Our teacher came in and talked to us in Spanish from the off. She spoke very little English and gave us instructions to complete a workbook…which was all in Spanish. After spending 10 minutes with my face in a dictionary I learned that the first question was “which numbers do you find difficult to pronounce”…we don’t know any numbers yet! This was going to be impossible. The teacher spent the afternoon trying to teach us first, second and third person words and differences when we can barely introduce ourselves in the language, it was a four hour disaster. We got through it thinking about our email about the wedding and whether we would hear back today.
After ‘school’ we checked our mail and within minutes we had recieved a reply from Ellie who co-ordinates the visits to the village and who just so happens to live on Bocas! This was sign number 2 that this wedding was meant to be and we arranged to meet Ellie that evening to explain a little more about our story and of course to hear hers.
We agreed to meet at the chinese restaurant and as we waited outside we quickly changed our minds about eating there. We were discussing whether Ellie would mind if we changed location as Ellie got out of a taxi in front of us. We said our hello’s and Ellie solomnly looked at us and said “are we eating in there????” we politely said “where do you recommend” and she sighed a sigh of relief and directed us to the best Pizza on the island. We all laughed as Ellie explained that her husband had instructed her to behave and that if we wanted to eat there that is where we should eat, she had been preparing herself for drinking tea all night I think. We wandered over to a cosy little Italian and sat on the street and watched the island life unfold around us as we nattered about our journey and Ellies own adventures with her husband Keith. We clicked immediately and had a lovely meal, although it was late Ellie invited us back to her home to meet Keith whom we had heard so much about already. Ellie had a ride with us in Peggy and we sat up until the early hours of the morning exchanging stories and laughing and joking. We left so excited to hear from Ellie about what Anne thought of our request and whether we would recieve the go ahead.
The whole thing seemed to be directed by fate, it realy was meant to be…unlike our Spanish lessons!
We turned up for class again the next day and again sat through 2 hours of intense Spanish sentence building with no idea what on earth we were doing. When the bell rang for break we decided to skip class and run away. We explained we had no idea of what was going on and that we would start again from the beginning next week. We got back to Peggy and decided enough was enough. we didn’t REALLY like the island, the lessons were terrible AND it was friday afternoon. It meant we would have to stay all weekend waiting for lessons to start on Monday and THEN spend another week on island for the lessons. With that we decided to leave…easier said than done. The car ferry only left the island 3 days a week…it was friday and we had no idea IF it went today or what time. Alex went to the dock and the ferry was loading the last car…he broke into a run and asked them to wait for us. He ran back to me and Peggy ( I was making us a coffee ), jumped in and said “were going…the ferry goes NOW!” I clung onto all of the things on the side I had been using, the toaster, the bread, the coffee pot, the sugar and milk while we trundled down the street and up the HUGE ramp onto the ferry. Again fate had dealt us a hand and helped us get off the island. Within minutes we were waving goodbye to Bocas Del Torro and wondering where we would end up. It was 4pm, the ferry took 2 hours to get to Almirante, (the awful place we spent the night locked up with the dogs) and we were faced with a 300km drive back to civilisation in the dark on the winding roads through the dense forest. We had spotted a place to park for the night on our way to the island and had that in mind for the night. As we docked and drove out of Almirante we felt free again, back on the open road to who knows where, we knew we had done the right thing. Bocas had presented us with an amazing opportunity with the wedding and of course meeting Ellie and Keith but had nothing left to offer us. We drove as night set in and followed the vans stacked impossibly high with bananas, the literal fruits of a days labour. We got excited about the possible wedding and within 3 hours we were at our pre-planned parking spot. We pulled over and parked as flat as possible and listened to the wind howl around the van. We were parked on the peak of the mountain road and the wind pounded Peggys walls, rocked her side to side and rattled our bones inside. We woke up every now and then and thought we had been carried away by the wind or that Peggy’s walls had collapsed completely. The rain arrived with dawn and we realised we were parked at the bottom of a path to a hostel. We wandered up the rocky hill to grab some breakfast there and possibly use the showers. It was a looong way up and when we arrived it was the oddest place ever. We asked around but there was no breakfast and nobody knew if we would be allowed to use the shower so we just hit the road again. We consulted with the map and decided to find the beach for the night. We found a place in our guide book that sounded like we might be able to camp with the internet to check our email. After another day driving we arrived at the beach, the nicest along the Pacific coast of Panama and a request to park in the carpark and use the wifi recieved a straight NO. We asked along the beach and finally a very friendly man allowed us to park on his section of beach for the night. The beach was busy with Panamanian families and fishermen and we wandered along the hot sand as the sun again said goodbye to another day. We wondered what tomorrow would bring, as always we closed our eyes not knowing what was coming with the next sunrise.

Find out what happens next on our travelling wedding adventure!