We have been waiting for an opportunity to take one of Lisa's river tours and it finally came when we were making our way up to an island close to where she lives. Lisa is the famous, at least among cruisers in this area, master mola maker. I have been reading about her for a long time, and was always told she had the best molas in the San Blas Islands. I already had a lot of molas, but was saving some money for hers and got to have a showing the other day when she found us in one of our anchorages. The other interesting thing to know about Lisa is she is a transvestite and a very good one at that. It is a testimony to how open minded the Kunas are that this is accepted in their culture. She seems to be highly respected and a big part of her community. I managed to add a few more molas to my collection.

What I hadn't heard about Lisa is how hardy and adventurous she is and that she leads one of the more rigorous river tours. We didn't quite know what to expect, and were surprised at how long, and how much fun it was. We joined 6 other cruisers for the trip. We were picked up by a panga for the 50 min. trip over to the mainland. We were surprised to see how narrow the river mouth was and that we weren't taking the boat up the river, but were mooring it and hiking a trail back into the jungle. Fortunately I had worn my better shoes and brought my bug spray along. She told us there was a waterfall involved so we already had our swimming suits on. After weeks of getting our exercise just from swimming, snorkeling and laps walking around small islands, we were in for about a 6 mile hike taking us through the jungle and up and down steep hillsides. Along the way we stopped at a couple of Kuna cemeteries which were unique. One of them was Lisa's family and you could tell she was quite proud of the fact that she was able to provide such a nice resting place for her family. The Kunas are very spiritual, and they seem to have to provide their own cemeteries for their families. A roof over the grave was important preferably one made of natural materials so that the spirits were able to pass through. They were decorated with personal belongings and some had incense or coco chips burning.

Once we made it to the waterfall the really fun part of the trip began. It started with a 15-20 foot jump down into a deep pool just below the waterfall. The water was incredibly cool and refreshing. We had a rest here and then Lisa informed us we could take an alternate route back along the river but we would have to do some swimming in places. It was slow going because we had so many fun diversions along the way. We had a couple of water slides to go down and a vine swing to jump from into another deep river pool. It was beginning to feel like we had our own �"Survivor Panama�" episode going on. It was all a lot of fun and after about 6 hours we were delivered back to our boat. I don't know how the others were feeling but we were pretty exhausted and glad to be able to take it easy for the rest of the day. We got some fun pictures that I will load once I get internet.

We will continue our tour around the San Blas archipelago for the next 4 weeks.