Caribbean winter 2014-2015, part 2: San Blas

CC, Carolina and I continued the trip to San Blas while Suad and Nicola went back to freezing Boston.

General area

Little zoom

Major zoom: we were here.

Background info: During my research of things to do in Panamá, on the 5^th or 6^th page of search results I saw people raving about the San Blas Islands.  There were plenty of reviews, but no site for booking a stay or anything like that. I wound up on a site for a travel agency that worked with San Blas tours and crossed my fingers that the payment I sent them through a Panamanian version of Western Union did indeed get us from Panamá City to the islands and back.

IT WAS AWESOME. With the exception of the car rides. Let me explain:

CC, Carolina and I got picked up from our air BnB in Panamá City at 5:30am (all transport was included in the reservation price). We shared a van with a lovely group of girls from the UK, driving across Panamá and arriving at the dock a few hours later. The van ride was brutal – definitely the worst part of my whole trip. The roads outside of the city were not only full of whip-lash inducing hairpin turns, but also had extremely steep hills. Our driver, a small man who introduced himself as “Duende,” (which means ‘dwarf’ in Spanish), boasted that he had driven this path hundreds of times, he had even driven it before it was paved a few years back. Presumably to prove this point, Duende drove as fast as the van would go, often slamming on the accelerator right before the top of the hills, which made you feel like you were throwing up even if you weren’t (many people were). This treacherous portion of the drive is about 1.5 hours in duration, and may the lord help you if you don’t have witty UK girls’ glorious accents to get you through it.

We arrived at the dock and met our first Kuna Yalans, charged with bringing us by speedboat to the secluded islands where we would stay for the next 3 days. Kuna Yalans are some of the last Central Americans that escaped colonization by Spain (mostly because of their distance from mainland Panamá), and generally speaking they proudly avoid learning Spanish. All of the Kuna Yalans at the dock were male, the females stay on the islands until they island hop (more on this later). These guys were dressed in very western clothing (t-shirts and board shorts) and you could distinguish the tribal leaders from lesser members by body weight: the chief had an immense potbelly and the lowly teenagers had appendages like matchsticks.

Young Kuna Yalan at the helm as we land.

More vans arrived, and we all clamored into separate boats destined for different islands. We were loaded up with everything we would need for our stay: the islands have no electricity or refrigeration or running water, much less grocery stores, so we had to bring lots of bottled water and snacks. Our boat had about 7 other people on it. The Kuna Yalan teenagers are very skilled boaters, and by that I mean they can remain standing when everyone else is clutching anything in reach with the goal of staying inside the boat as it careens off of huge waves at the speed of light (approximation) and comes crashing down with (literally) bone crushing force. Our shrieks of delight and fear soon turned to a very real concern to arrive to the islands with a non-pulverized coccyx. I came up with the genius method of wearing one life jacket and sitting on another, which I highly recommend in all situations.

When we landed on the island (Isla Aroma), we were greeted by a gorgeous Hungarian couple (Adriana and Ben) that worked as volunteers. 

Ben and Adriana

Talking with these volunteers, I was eventually able to get a lot of interesting information on the tribe, but my first impression of Kuna Yalans was that they were quite surly toward tourists - they warmed up to us eventually (to a certain degree, some more than others). After seeing the men in such casual clothing, it was interesting to see their female counterparts in very formal dress: long, colorful, intricately folded dresses; beaded anklets that covered the entire shin from knee to foot; sandals (the men were always barefoot); and lots of gold jewelry.  I didn't take pictures so as not to treat them as a spectacle, but Nicola got a good one while we were still in the city. The women specialize in weaving molas, lovely swaths of cloth, often depicting island scenes of fish and birds.

Kuna Yalan lady in the city: watching the boats pass through the canal.

Molas for sale wave in the breeze on Isla Aroma.

There were also a few small children and maybe 3-4 teenagers in this particular tribe. All in all, on our small island, there were about 15 tourists and 12-18 Kuna Yalans. Tourists have the option of staying in tents or small huts; we sprang for huts and were very happy to have done so, especially when we saw huge coconuts falling unexpectedly from trees with enough force to kill a man (I’m pretty sure I’m not exaggerating).

Our one-room hut, shared amongst 4 people for 3 days

Sweet, deadly coconut

Adriana and Ben played the vital role of easing the tension between irreverent Kuna Yalans and demanding tourists, which they did as best they could. My first glimpse of Adriana, a tan, svelte multilingual goddess, was her talking a French family off the brink of emotional breakdown because they had to sit on tree stumps to eat instead of at a table. She and Carolina and I later talked extensively, and she shared that she was often frustrated, because as someone who has worked in the tourism industry for years, she has difficulty with the attitudes of the Kuna Yalans who simultaneously want tourism money but also want nothing to do with tourists. By the way, the stumps were more than satisfactory! In fact, I was in heaven, but I heard lots of complaints (let’s be honest, mostly from the French people) about how the food serving sizes were much too small, the beds were too sandy, etc. etc. Indeed the serving sizes were pretty small, but I was ok with it since it’s only for a few days, and also what the hell maybe I would end up looking like Adriana by the end of our stay, so totes worth it. And do you know why the beds were sandy? Because we were on a small island in the Caribbean with no buildings or cars or technology in sight. Which is what you WANTED, French people. So stfu.

Rough enough to be real, beautiful enough to be paradise.

Naps on secluded beaches

It was exhilarating to take showers in water that trickled out of big tubs perched on roofs that caught rain water, and to brush your teeth while standing in the sand at a small “sink” a few steps from Caribbean water, lit only by moonlight, and to not care how you look because there are no mirrors and no lights. 

This is where we brushed our teeth

Adriana gave us even more interesting insights into life with Kuna Yalans. For instance, they believe in inter-familial marriages, with such inbreeding resulting in a disproportional concentration of albinos in their population. These albinos are considered a magnificent blessing to a family, since these children are given royal status. However, if there is one place in the world where you don’t want to be albino, it’s in the unrelenting sun of the San Blas islands. They are not allowed outside until after sunset. We didn’t see any in our tribe though (of course I mean the tribe that we stayed with, which I have already selfishly appropriated in true western fashion as “our tribe.”). Another interesting fact is that about once a month, the entire tribe picks up and moves to another island in the San Blas chain. A different tribe comes to live at the recently vacated one. This keeps life minimalistic and prevents the desire to collect belongings from taking hold – crucial, since with the influx of tourism money, Kuna Yalans are becoming more materialistic. The women now have a penchant for gold, the men for brand name clothing and alcohol.

We stayed for 3 nights, and our last night on the island happened to be New Years Eve. That afternoon, the guys on the island gathered lots of firewood for what would later be an epic bonfire. Carolina and her gorgeous friend Cata shared an awesome Colombian New Year’s tradition with me: writing all the things you wanted to leave in the past and not bring with you into the new year on a small fabric “Old Year Man” that can really only be described as a voodoo doll. You write on him and then at midnight you burn him and he takes all the written burdens with him when he goes, allowing you a fresh start for the New Year. I had a lot to write about. Our Old Year Man took a lot of baggage with him.

Año viejo: Old year man

Another Colombian tradition is to pack a bag and run around wherever you are. This represents the travel you will have in the coming year, with the more you pack in your bag to run around directly correlating to the amount of travel you will experience. We prepared ALL of our luggage for the run, which would take place at midnight.

In the hours leading up to midnight, we gathered around the bonfire and sang songs. Sadly enough, someone brought a guitar and let me play it, which was widely regarded as a bad move because I suck. “Amanda, which songs did you play to such an international audience eager to sing along?” you ask. “Please don’t say ‘Country folk songs’!” you add. Yes. Country folk songs. I taught “Red river valley” and “You are my sunshine” to Kuna Yalan children, and in my opinion it was awesome. Everyone else passively approved, probably because they were drinking heavily.

Gather round, kiddies! Photo credit - CC

This is Casey, who constantly cracked me up with his antics, we were probably singing Michael Jackson songs here. Photo credit - CC

We also played a great game of zoo, which I taught to the local kids and tourists alike. Zoo requires each player to choose a sign and a sound for a certain animal (for instance, I might choose an elephant for my animal; with a hand gesture of my arm waving like a trunk and a sound like “barRRRA” which is obviously the sound an elephant makes). Once everyone has their animal gesture and sound, a player does his own animal moves before “passing” to another person by doing their animal motion and sound. Of course you end up in a mess of people (in some cases, rather dignified adults with impressive titles and corner offices) trying to remember their own animal then moo like a cow while waving their arms like a chicken in a desperate attempt to pass to the correct person, which leads to paroxysms of laughter with very few language barriers to overcome.

One Kuna Yalan child was UNCANNILY good at animal sounds. Really, it was scary. Another one (he was probably 16, his name was Casey) was a little bit drunk. When we went around choosing our animals, we got around the whole circle (Fish! Tiger! Horse! Monkey!) and then got to Casey. He was very shy and would not yell out his animal but insisted on telling me privately and then have me explain to the others for him. He leaned in close and kind of hovered there for a second, and I could smell LOTS of beer on his breath. After a dramatic pause, he whispered gravely in my ear: “Tell them I will be Michael Jackson.” After a good 30 seconds being paralyzed by laughter, I fruitlessly tried to explain that MJ was not an animal. Casey wouldn’t have it.  He even had the sound effect picked out: singing “We are the world.” It was the best game of zoo I’ve ever played.

The internet explains zoo. 

At midnight, we burned The Old Year man and ran around the island with our heavy bags like maniacs, and it was absolutely glorious. People sang Auld Lang Syne and I accompanied with about 1/3 of the chords, impressing myself deeply. We danced “Danza Kudoro” and basically had the time of our lives. We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning drinking Panamanian beer with the Kuna Yalans, with bits of Spanglish interwoven with miming as the main form of communication.

The next morning, everyone was hung over (especially Casey), and we spent the morning in hammocks, reading and rehydrating. 

We left in the afternoon, ready to welcome real showers and electrical outlets and civilization back into our lives. We said heartfelt goodbyes to the Kuna Yalans and the Hungarian volunteers. Salt in our hair and life jackets under our butts, we rode the boats back to the dock and piled into vans to take us back to Panamá City. On the way back, our van broke down, which was actually a godsend because it allowed us to get out of the car and get some fresh air for a second (don’t forget that the path back to the city was MakeYouVomit Road). The people who had been the drunkest the night before were green by the time we made it to the city!

Most Understated Sign Ever.

We got back to Panamá City and all gorged on full-sized meals for the first time in days, took long showers, and prepared for the next part of our trips: Cata back to Chicago, Carolina back to Boston, and CC and I to Puerto Rico and St Kitts, which will be Part 3!

Note: When I got back to Boston, on the landing page of BBC.co.uk there was a long article about how San Blas is the place to go to really unplug and have an authentic island experience, so I’m sure it will be packed now!

Another note: Everyone is fine with being unplugged and natural until someone gets hurt! The last day, Cata stepped on a sea urchin and had to have a very skilled Kuna Yalan extract the painful spines from her foot. When stuff like that happens, you realize how far away you are from dependable medical care, and the charm of the island starts to be tempered with the desire for sanitation and easily accessible care.

In case you want to go:

Agency that books San Blas stays – Estela was very helpful and responded to emails within 24 hours. We did the “Ultimate San Blas” tour, staying in huts. 4 days, 3 nights. Bring LOTS of bottled water and sunscreen, plus any snacks you might want (meals are included but if you are used to American portions you will probably get pretty hungry). Also, be aware that there are no trash cans on the island – anything you bring with you must also be brought back (we stuffed trash into empty water bottles which made for easy transport).

This is the way to eat.