San Blas at Last

Any one of the 350-plus islands in the chain or cluster of islands could be the subject of a dream, could have been home to Robinson Crusoe or even Wilson.  Any one of them could be the island where two people in tattered clothing find themselves stranded after a horrific shipwreck.  Perhaps looking for a message in a bottle One day they find one only to read a knock-knock joke inside?  It could be a perfect spot for a honeymoon.  Any one of the islands could be an oasis for resting a worried mind.  Any one of them could be the subject of a beautiful watercolor painting.  It could be the loneliest place on earth.  Many days of solitude on one of those islands could send an idle mind into madness.  It could be the place a person finds God.

I am indeed struggling to find the right words to describe this special place.  Brilliant, exquisite, blinding colors? White sand and coconut palms?  Peace in a hammock?  Soft rhythms of the lapping waves?  Breeze, a cool breezes almost every minute of the day?  Clear, crystal clear waters in many shades of aqua bordered by deeper waters in indigo???   Starfish here and there in the shallow seas?  Quiet golden sunrises on gray dawns ushering in another new day in paradise; stunning sunsets toasting the day’s close?  Blankets of stars in the night sky?  Luscious, fresh-caught lobster, octopus, and spider crabs—more than anyone would ever dream of having for only a few dollars?  And direct from the water to the skillet, plentiful corvina, sardines, and mackerel to nourish a body and fill a belly — all there just for the taking.

Here’s a curious thing.  A person can be in a rare, almost unreal place . . . in a caldera, deep in the forest, high on a mountain top or in this case, on a tropical island, and find absorbing it, feeling it, I mean really feeling in it every cell of the body, up, down, in and out, through and through is difficult.  In the moment, being in a place like San Blas almost stuns the senses making the experience too much to absorb, digest, and know that it is real.  All the elements tickle all the senses but it cannot be truly appreciated until it is gone.  Gone and done.  Today, the memory is vivid but only today, do I know that it was real.

We learned so much.  Our captain, Jorge, from Spain and his wife, Deici from Guatemala and their son, Jamil were our hosts.  Out of necessity, we practiced our Spanish; they practiced their English.  They were better at teaching us Spanish than all the expensive class time and Duo Lingo we have studied.  Near the end of our visit, Jorge remarked his head hurt from trying to speak English for such a long while.  Yo tambien, yo comprendo!!!

These mostly uninhabited islands dot an area of 100 square miles on the Caribbean just northeast of the isthmus.  They have no mountains and but for coconut palms, there are no trees.  Like flat disks of sand rising out of the sea, the islands are sights for the imagination.  Standing on any one island several others can be seen here and there and far away on the horizon.  Many others however cannot be seen and are hours away by a powered boat. 

The San Blas islands and a narrow strip of land on the northeast coast of Panama (remember the length of Panama runs predominantly east and west) make up a unique territory controlled and governed by the indigenous Guna tribe that lives there.   The Guna folk, like the Catalonians in Barcelona, have retained and to this day protect their way of life, their culture, and their customs.  They control this part of Panama.  They have their own flag and their own government, yet the territory lies on Panamanian soil.  Most Gunas live on the mainland or one of their heavily populated larger islands, in tightly populated communities.  They have a roof but very little more.  A few islands among the 300 or so have electricity provided by a gasoline generator.  When the generator is not running, there is no power, no running water, no convenience.   Nada.  A  few islands have recently built rustic public toilets – so picture this . . . just off a beautiful white sandy beach, one might see a couple of huts with walls made of sticks and a thatched roof. One is for sleeping and the other is for cooking the day’s catch for the family or guests.   The scent of wood smoke from the cook fire comes from a door-like opening.  Then down the way is another structure.  PVC pipe leads from a plastic cistern mounted atop the structure to a hole in the ground that reaches the water table just 2 feet below.   Occasionally that seawater is pumped to the cistern and provides water for the flush.  The debris is pumped to a septic tank buried a few feet away.  Our Captain said “Tourists want toilets.  If there is no toilet, there are no tourists.  No tourists, mean no income.”

Tourists can visit a handful of the islands.  Some people come just for the day and others stay a few nights.  For guests who prefer to stay multiple nights, their island might have open-air wooden huts with dirt or rustic wooden floor.  Some islands have three or four wooden cabanas with an actual door; some offer only tent accommodations.   Regardless there is usually a shack “restaurant”  that sells beer, wine and serves guests food caught that day.

We were told—and I put absolutely no stock in the validity of this story — within the community, some families own one of the small islands offshore.  If they have resources and if their island has anchorage, they can build a small wooden hut, hang some hammocks, call their establishment a restaurant or a stopping point for overnighters.  Tourists stop by, have a cerveza, listen to music, relax in a hammock or snorkel.  The family earns a few dollars.  In three months, this family unit leaves and another family unit moves to the island to get their share of the tourist dollar.  Other islands remain, by design, with no development at all.

 Our UK friends had just visited San Blas when we met them back in October.  Authenticity lovers, they stayed three nights on an island in a 3-sided open-air hut.  Gary is like me – high energy.  He said one night would have been plenty and he wouldn’t wish a three-night stay on his worst enemy.   Jill told us they ate fish, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Sometimes they’d also have rice on the side.  Water was in short supply but beer was plentiful.  I’m glad we chose to stay on Jorge and Dieci’s sailboat. 

The Guna people make a living catching their food from the sea, growing and selling coconuts raising cattle.  Women make “molas” and bracelets that are sold to tourists as well.  Everyone buys some as they are true works of practiced skill and art.   I must talk about Molas which are far more culturally important than simply a tourist souvenir.  Their artistic creation starts with pieces of fabric, usually black or dark blue on which narrow, maybe ¼” wide strips of colorful fabric are blind-stitched by hand into intricate, often geometric designs.  At a very young age, girls are taught and soon join their mothers in sewing molas.  Even in Panama City, Guna women are easily recognizable.  Most Guna women wear blouses made of molas every day as an “important way of upholding and valuing their traditions and therefore their identity as Guna people”. They also wear arm and leg adornments that at first glance look like colorful socks or maybe even tattoos.  They are instead long thin cords on which tiny beads are strung intricately so that when wrapped many times around the leg or arm the colored beads line up to form intricate patterns. 

What’s there to do in San Blas?  Sightseeing is the number one sport.  After that, there is swimming, snorkeling, fishing, paddle-boarding, or on some islands, volleyball.  Otherwise, it is hanging out in a hammock, eating fish, and drinking beer.

This trip confirmed my earlier thinking that the sailing life is not for me.  There is nothing wrong with it at all.  It is very nice, lovely, peaceful, quiet and if your vessel is in the right spot, the sunrises and sunsets are like a daily gift from heaven but unless your day is committed to making meals for guests, growing fresh homemade yogurt in a culture, and baking bread (as our hostess did), or virtually any other type of work, the life is just a little too uneventful for me.  If I lived on a boat, I’d be catching fish, cooking enough food to feed fifteen, and probably eating everything Stan did not and pretty soon I’d be approaching a couple hundred pounds.  It’s very hard to burn calories on a boat – or even on an island. 

Oh, we didn’t just lounge around.  We snorkeled and visited several islands but honestly, how many hours can a person snorkel, walk the beaches of a small island, and how many fish and gourmet meals can a person consume? 

I mentioned crab, lobster, pulpo, mackerel, fresh-baked bread, and homemade yogurt because that is what we ate.  Periodically, Guna men in dugout boats motored up to our vessel bearing fresh, hand-caught, wriggling lobster.  Another arrived bearing spider crab and another selling just caught mackerel.  The shellfish was put in a bag made of rope and fastened to the boat where the lobster and crab not cooked that day stay fresh for many days to come.  Deici is an attentive hostess and an excellent chef.  Seemingly effortlessly she prepared fresh seafood in her tiny galley to make our very fancy meals.  I watched her nonchalantly hold the lid on the pan to prevent the lobster from escaping the boiling water.  I also watched this young mother make her own no-cook yogurt and delicious homemade soft cheese.  I look forward to trying these recipes on my own.

We spent two nights on the sailboat with this small family.  I was keenly concerned about the high winds that occur in this, Panama’s dry season.  No problem, the boat was stable and no one became queasy.   Sleeping though was peculiar.  The gentle rocking and water sounds were pleasant.  I’m accustomed however to sleeping in an air-conditioned room at about 66 degrees Fahrenheit.  Although there was a nice draft the air was a bit too warm and humid for me plus the boat has its own particular sounds.  No rest for the weary.

Two nights seem so short but we made new friends in this chunk of time; Jorge, Deici, and Jamil will always be dear to us.  We basked in the kind of beauty that in the grand scheme of things only a few get to enjoy.  Unexpectedly we learned about a culture largely hidden away from the rest of the world and relaxed like we have not in many years.  Did the trip meet our suspenseful expectations? No, it did not.  Truthfully I don’t know what we expected.  I’d researched the geography and also knew a little about the Guna people and their culture so none of that was a big surprise.  I knew the islands were going to be beautiful as I’d seen many photos and videos on YouTube. 

But we were blown away. What haunts me is . . . that sailboat, its captain, his family, those seas, those starfish, the nighttime stars and those lovely brown-skinned native people catching lobster didn’t show up just for us, they are real; they are right there, right now and it all lives on.