by Ryan Harris
02/13/2009, Isla del Rey, Las Perlas

The inhabitants of the Gone Native took a moment to relax. After having a long dingy tour around Isla del Rey we returned to the boat and had a small snack, fit for a king, before Bill went to take a snooze. My Mom and Dad started reading while Wesley and I played on our Wii for about half an hour until our parents called for us to see a pelican on our dingy.

We went outside into the cockpit to see a pelican just sitting there and looking at us curiously. Wesley went back inside our boat to retrieve the camera and started taking pictures. After a few minutes he jumped into the air and flew right on to the back steps of the Gone Native. Wesley started getting closer and took more pictures. Eventually, he reached the pelican's danger point and he flew away. We all were a little sad that it flew away, but got over it and went back to what we were doing in the first place.

We heard our parents calling for us again and saw the pelican on the dingy before they were able to tell us about it. This time as soon as he saw us he flew back onto the back steps, where my Dad was sitting and reading. Stanley, our newly named pelican, jumped into the air and flew onto the rail which was about a yard from where my Dad was sitting. We stared at him totally excited, but did not show it because we didn't want to intimidate Stanley. Just then Bill came out from his nap and was surprised to see Stanley. Bill decided to get some fish for the pelican. A few minutes later the pelican jumped right next to Dad and started nibbling at his legs. Stanley jumped back as Dad moved. He didn't hurt Dad, but just wanted to give him a friendly taste. I guess Dad was just not the flavor he was hoping for.

Dad then handed a piece of fish to Stanley, but once again, he flew off the boat. We expected him to come back in a few minutes, but sadly he never came back again. Although we enjoyed the few minutes with him we were a bit sad that we probably would never see him again, but all in all it was awesome to meet him.

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by Ryan and Wesley Harris
01/31/2009, Fort Sherman, Colon, Panama

So can you find the monkey??????


Check out the photo album for the answer......

"http://www.me.com/gallery/#100001

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by Wesley Harris
01/25/2009, Small island of Kuna Yala

For several days we planned to take a nice, scenic river tour and a hike. After talking with the local Kuna Indians, we learned of a unique tour and went with our friends from Pelican Express, who are also from Ventura. We hopped into our guide's dugout canoe. We went through a river seeing many tropical birds, lizard, and man-eating crocodiles (joking).

We ended up at a tiny dock and started to walk up a very muddy trail. We came to many steep areas and ran into a lot of the "101 highways of ants". Eventually we ran into an ankle deep river. Ryan and I walked through it, happy to get all the mud off our feet, and it felt really soothing and cool. We continued and ran across many streams.
We eventually ran into a knee-deep river. Now our guide said we would walk up river for about 45 minutes (they don't use miles, everything is based on time). It was a rocky river, and was really fun to walk in. Sometimes it was ankle deep, knee deep, and even up to waist deep. Ryan and I were really excited, and were always around seventy feet ahead of the others. We luckily had sticks, which turned out to be really helpful. We might have fallen in many times without them.

In the end we finally reached the waterfall, and had a nice lunch. We took a small swim and got ready for the ascent downward. Since Ryan and I were partially wet, we didn't mind falling, so we dropped our stick and raced them down. Some river paths were shoulder deep and we had lots of fun. Since we got down about five minutes before everyone else we sat down in the river and let the cool river run past us. We then hiked back and hopped into the canoe. We got home and then headed to a nice anchorage where we had a wonderful meal of lobster (which we had just bought still flapping in the Kuna's canoe)!

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