The San Blas are a group of several hundred islands off the Coast of Panama to the west of the canal. Many of the islands are uninhabited, some have one or two families living on them and some are densely populated with barely three foot between one compound and the next. The people living on the islands are the Kuna tribe of Indians  who seem, in the main, to live their traditional lifestyle growing coconuts, growing some produce on the mainland and fishing. The Kuna are quite short - only the pygmy people are shorter.

Our first anchorage was East Hollandaise which was a group of four islands one of which had two families living on it. Each family seemed to have a compound comprising two huts, made out of wood and palm leaves, one of which was for living in and the other for sleeping.

When we went ashore the men were off, probably fishing, but there were some women and children around. We asked permission to walk around the island and to take some photographs and they were quite happy for us to do this but the women then went about their work. The children seemed excited to see us especially after we took some photographs and showed then their picture on the camera screen. There was also a lot of excitement and jockeying for position to look through the binoculars.

The next day we moved to Green Island which was totally uninhabited but had a lot of birds and butterflies.

The World ARC had arranged a meet for the following day so we moved to Chichimee island and went ashore for a pot luck meal and the opportunity to meet again with the other boats and swap stories.

The Kuna Indians are known for making Molars which is a form of needlework using multiple layers of cloth and stitching to form patterns. These patterned cloths form part of their traditional dress and these days a source of income from selling them to tourists. A well known transvestite master molar maker was on Chichimee for our meet up and had a large display of molars for sale.

After Chichimee we sailed to a few other islands, most notably the Carti Group which is very densely populated, it is difficult to believe that there is room for another building on the islands. As soon as we landed we were shown the way to the main street that had a number of shops selling some basic foodstuffs although we were unable to buy ant fresh product except pineapple. This island is very used to tourists and does get visited by people from some cruise ships. As we walked down the street there seemed to be a wave of activity about ten foot ahead of us as the locals got out their molars and beads for sale. The Kuna women were dressed in their full native costume and very willing to have their photographs taken – as long as you coughed up the $1 per person fee!

After what seemed like a very short seven days we left the San Blas Islands and started a slow three day trip to Colon for our Panama Canal transit.