There are about 365 islands in the San
Blas archipelago, and about 49 of them are inhabited by the Kuna (or
Guna); in fact, San Blas is called Guna Yala in their language. The
Kuna are an indigenous group of about 300,000 who live on the
islands, along the coast and in Panama City and other cities. Some
also live in northern Colombia. They largely govern themselves and
strive to keep their traditions and way of life, mostly without
interference from the Panamanian government. They speak Kuna, and the
younger people also speak Spanish, some English as well: tourism is
increasingly playing a role. They live in communities concentrated on
the inhabited islands, but every family gets to move to one of the
uninhabited islands for three months at a time to harvest coconuts
(and, after seeing the crowded conditions under which they usually
live, maybe to have some more space and freedom for a while?). Their
diet consists largely of fish and other seafood, wild rice, coconuts
and yucca.
To enter Panama we needed not only the
stamp from the Panamanian immigration, but also pay $20 Kuna tax per
person, which is both done at the same time on one of the inhabited
islands.
To enter Panama we needed not only the
stamp from the Panamanian immigration, but also pay $20 Kuna tax per
person, which is both done at the same time on one of the inhabited
islands.
Thus, after a few hours of relaxing in
the water and on the beach of the first picture-perfect island (if
one didn't look too closely on the windward side, where, among all
kinds of garbage, a huge old TV had taken residence on the beach), we
pulled anchor and moved close to the 'immigration island' where we
spent the night.
First thing in the morning Juan took
Tahsin (and Johann, whom Tahsin had asked if he wanted to come along)
to the island with the dinghy. Tahsin had all of our passports and
the money for the Kuna, and within a good hour they were all back in
the boat. Johann said that the Panamanian official stamped the
passports before they delivered the money to a Kuna representative in a different building. We were officially in Panama.
Now we were free to move among the
islands. Tahsin and Rengin have a range of options. One aspect –
besides the beauty of an island and its suitability for swimming and
snorkelling - is very likely to visit islands where Kuna live and can
benefit from the visitors, selling their handicrafts, food and
drinks: beer and rum are generally at hand. The Kuna women make
beautiful appliqued 'molas' and beadwork.
Now we were free to move among the
islands. Tahsin and Rengin have a range of options. One aspect –
besides the beauty of an island and its suitability for swimming and
snorkelling - is very likely to visit islands where Kuna live and can
benefit from the visitors, selling their handicrafts, food and
drinks: beer and rum are generally at hand. The Kuna women make
beautiful appliqued 'molas' and beadwork.
We moved on to anchor close to one of
the islands where families spend time alone, and Juan took us, three
at a time, over to spend the afternoon enjoying the beach and the
water. The family of four or five stayed either in one of the
bamboo-walled, palm-mat covered huts or a tent. There was also a
shelter and a hut used for cooking, which would come in handy: Tahsin
was responsible for the evening meal and had decided to make pork
ribs, sausages and skewered mushrooms, plus potato salad. Under his
tutelage Juan made a fire in the cook shed, and soon the flames
flared up, fuelled by dripping fat. The result was delicious, just
like every single meal we had during the trip. Rengin is an excellent
cook, and it's still a marvel to me how she produced the gourmet
meals for all of us in the tiny kitchen. Another highlight I forgot
to mention was the fish caught during the crossing, a barracuda –
Zoe's first catch ever – and a mahi-mahi, also prepared by Tahsin.
One more move brought us to within
reach of this island and another, smaller one, the last ones we would
visit. Close by was a boat graveyard of sorts: boats that had run
aground on the reef and been abandoned there. Some were no longer
visible, another still had the top of a mast poking out of the water.
One of them was a huge ferry someone had bought in Canada and planned
to use here. Tahsin told us that this man had got hung up on the reef
with his catamaran and decided to use the ferry to pull it off –
only to get the huge boat stuck as well. It is sitting there now with
its lead-painted hull, rusting, slowly decaying. 'Blue Sailing's'
suggestion to try and find reef-safe sunscreen seems ridiculous in
the light of all these boats damaging the reefs so much more than any
sunscreen could.
For one more afternoon and evening we
got to play on the beach, have our meal delivered from the boat,
watch the sun set over the Caribbean, party a bit in the moonlight.
The next morning saw us up early, packs ready on deck, waiting for
the lancha that would take us
to Porvenir in about three quarters of an hour.
Rengin
would come to Panama City with us: she had to re-stock supplies for
the way back to Cartagena the very next day, with another load of
people, but it was time to say goodbye to Tahsin, Zoe and Juan and
also to Gatito and Nadia, the much-loved ship cats. A bit sad we
lined up for a group photo and took turns having our photos taken
with the captain and crew. It had been a wonderful week with a great
group of people, and I think at that moment most of us were a bit
reluctant to once again be on the go. Yet it was time to move and
stretch our legs beyond the perimeter of the boat and an island,
which offer only limited opportunity to do so.
The
lancha had picked us
up from our boat to deliver us to the island in the afternoon, a
large, deep boat with room for about twenty or twenty-five people,
covered by a canopy; another had picked us up and taken us back to
the boat later in the evening, this one without the canopy. I had
expected the covered one to take us across in the morning, but when
it finally arrived – half an hour later than expected – it was
the open one. No time to cover backpacks, no time to get out rain
gear: we'd have to sit through whatever weather came our way. Clouds
nearly always hover somewhere close by, and often enough they deliver
rain, sometimes in heavy downpours, though mostly gone as quickly as
it comes.
We
piled into the boat, told to occupy the rear seats first, our luggage
stacked in front, and were on our way. First, there were a few stops
to pick up passengers from a couple of other islands, and right away
we realized that the covered boat would have changed nothing as far
as getting wet was concerned: the boat plowed through the waves at a
good clip, and the spray soon had soaked us completely: not a dry
patch on our bodies, at least on the side where I was sitting, except
for our shoulders and heads. That, too, was soon to change: the
threatening rain materialized in a sudden deluge. With a measure of
relief we saw that smaller backpacks (containing any electronics and
papers anyone had along) had been stowed in a cubby hole in the
front; there was hope that we'd find our things undamaged, and we, of
course, would get dry in time. After about forty minutes we entered
the mouth of a river and followed it upstream for another few
minutes, then we had reached 'port'.
Soon
we were divided up in groups of six and assigned one of the waiting
four-wheel drive vehicles that would take us to Panama City. Another
set of goodbyes, including to Rengin, another leg of the journey,
along a very curvy paved road through the jungle and after about an
hour on a straight highway right to Panama City. We were each taken
right to our hotels and hostels, so didn't have to worry about
orienting ourselves in a strange city when our minds were still in
ocean-sailing mode and our bodies still swaying with the waves.
The
glittering highrises of Panama City looked surreal in the mid-day
sun: the downtown area is huge, the towering buildings in many cases
not just square blocks of cement but with aesthetically pleasing
architecture. Still, I felt out of place and was glad when the driver
turned off into a relatively quiet residential area to drop us off at
our 'Casa Andrea'. We hugged our four remaining fellow travellers
and, still almost as wet as we had come off the boat more than two
hours ago, took refuge in our huge room. After five days without a
shower we now enjoyed the first hot one in a couple of weeks, washing
the salt from hair and skin. Once again we were creatures of terra
firma.
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