John writes: Our arrival in the San Blas Islands followed a boisterous sail down from Grand Cayman, three and a half days to the north. The charts here are very inaccurate, so arrival in daylight is vital – preferably when the sun is high so you can see the deep water and the coral. We arrived with 10 minutes of daylight to spare, and dropped anchor sheltered behind the reef, and just 50 meters off an island. Quite a relief!

To write about the San Blas Islands and their people properly would take much too much space for a blog. They are a group of some 300 islands stretching 150 miles along the north Panama coast almost to the Columbian Border – mostly archetypal low sand islands fringed by turquoise water and covered with palm trees.  Most are uninhabited, with just a few crammed from side to side with huts. The mainland backdrop is of high inaccessible hills covered by virgin rainforest. They are inhabited by the Kuna Indians who have best preserved their culture and way of life of all the tribes in the Americas. The Kuna people are autonomous and control this part of Panama. To quote the excellent pilot guide by Eric Bauhaus: “The Kuna are accepting of visitors, but prohibit any non-Kuna from permanently settling or intermarrying. Foreigners cannot buy land or invest in Kuna Yala (the Kuna name for the San Blas). The Kunas are physically small, rivalled only in shortness by the pygmies. The Kunas are well proportioned, healthy and have boundless energy”. 

Coconuts are the mainstay of the economy, and the women make money by selling colourful embroidered “Molas” or appliqué panels to visitors.

The Kunas travel around in dugout canoes (ulus) – hewn from Forest hardwood trees. They fish from them and travel around with small sails – surprisingly fast.  “Their day starts early, shortly before sunrise. They get into their dugouts and paddle the mile or two to the mainland – arriving at first light. Some have an additional hour’s walk inland to begin harvesting bananas, fruits, firewood and sugarcane. About one o’ clock they head back to the island. The remainder of the day is spent resting, fishing or taking a sail in the family “ulu”. In the evening they retire to their hammocks early.” There is no electricity.

However, there is one modern anachronism – some have cell phones – which operate on a system that the Kunas themselves run. However, there is no way to recharge these except on visiting yachts.

Although we had anchored close to the stunning beach we were slightly apprehensive of invading the privacy of the small family who were sitting around watching us. However, they whistled at us with bird or animal calls and waved at us to come over.  We exchanged smiles and nods (our Spanish is limited…our Kuna language non-existent!) With a smile the man offered us his cell phone. Fortunately we knew what he wanted, and since we can also charge 110 volt equipment on the boat, leapt back in the dinghy to go off and charge it. We had planned to move to a different anchorage while the sun was high, and not to stay the 2 hours I reckoned we needed to re-charge the phone. In our enthusiasm to please, we roared off in the dinghy - quite forgetting to lift the dinghy anchor…

We had heard stories of some of the older Kuna women having to hold their Molas right up to their eyes to see what they were stitching, and so we had bought many pairs of reading glasses to give away. We returned with the charged up phone, reading glasses and another small gift – which were gratefully received. They then pointed to some containers – agua, agua??  Knowing that for them fresh drinking water was at least a 6 mile round trip by canoe, and the rainy season was only just starting, we were delighted to be able to fill up their containers from the water maker on board.

We left that island having had a hugely enriching exchange. Little could have given us so much of an insight in such a short time.