We really enjoyed our visit to Ustupu. We went in to town early to buy vegetables from the Colombian trading boat before they left to go to the next village and then found a guy who sold me 5 gallons of gas. The last stop was at a tienda to buy some eggs and bread for friends on Desdemona. The store was out of eggs and bread but we met a school teacher that spoke pretty good english - his name was German. After chatting with him for a few minutes, he offered to show us around the island. For 3 hours he took us around the village, showed us the school where he works and introduced us to people in the village. It was fantastic and the people we met were very friendly. There are actually two villages which are separated by a river. The one village was much more traditional, with most of the women dressed in Kuna attire. We were told not to take any pictures. They are kind of weird about photo's. German took us to met a lady that sold sea food and she had this large bird in a cage - like a turkey vulture. I asked if I could take a picture of it and after some deliberation, she said no. There are a lot of albino's here in Kuna Yala and we saw at least 15 or more on Ustupu. We saw lots of ladies sewing molas and we were invited into a house where two ladies were selling molas. They had a very unique one that was black/grey with just a little bit of color - Karen bought it.

We left Ustupu and traveled about 5 miles to Mamitupu. A much smaller village, very traditional and the huts are very close together. It started to rain on Monday night and it rained for 36 hours with the wind blowing over 20 kts. CRAP.

Some Kuna's did paddle over to our boat the first day we arrived and had another mola that we picked up for a real good price. We will continue to pick up molas when we find ones that we like, so Laura, we got you covered.

We are probably going to head north again tomorrow and work our way back to the swimming pool anchorage where we are planning on meeting up with our friends on Better Days for Christmas.

Happy belated birthday to my big brother - we are really looking forward to your visit!