Titumate, Balboa, Tanela and Santa Maria

Titumate, Balboa and Tanela

Titumate is the first “real” coastal village when we come from Turbo to Trigana by boat, 30min away from Trigana on a small boat. The water can be crystalline as well as all blurry from the fresh water currents charged with sediments from the Rio Atrato. We don’t specially come here for the beach but because it is the starting point of the tracks leading to the Darien, to the National Park Los Katios, the therms of Balboa, the Kuna Indian village of Tanela, a few big rivers where you can go tubing (going down rivers of big air chambers). Sadly, the region is quite deforested due to farm land and production of wood for constructions…that’s why the tracks are there, for the wood and livestock.

Santa Maria and Unguia

If we follow the track after Balboa towards Unguia, we go through Santa Maria del Darien, new city where used to be Santa Maria la Antigua de Darien (1st city founded on the American continent in 1510, during the Spanish colonization with Martin Fernandez de Enciso and Vscao Nunez de Balboa). It was the capital of the Castilla de Oro for several decades. This city was the starting point for the invasion of the American continent by Francisco Pizzaro, Sebastian de Belalcazar, Diego de Almagro, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo and Pedro Arias Davila. Mainly built out of wood, the place was not spared by time; today we can only see some reminders of that era (especially numerous objects saved in a museum opened in 2019 by the Columbian state after the initiative of an Italian archaeologist).

Unguia is the second and last town in the gulf Uruba , after Acandi that is the only other town. All the other small villages or “caserios” are “corregimientos” from one or the other. Unguia is almost by the side of Rio Atrato, all the way south of Choco Caribeno; it is an entry point to the Natural National Park Los Katios, named after the Emberas-katios Indians living there.