Just above the swimming pool is a little island known as Barbecue island. It's a lovely open little island, that one can walk all the way around. A Kuna chap lives there and will cook a meal for you, if you give a day or so's warning so he can get the fish. A couple of times we met up there with friends and ate.

Sheltering us in the Hot Tub was a little lagoon surrounded by mangroves, this is the view of it from our fore deck:

On the far left you can see the white of the waves breaking on the reef beyond, here's a closer view, taken from the dinghy:

You can see how the different depths of water can be seen from the colours, well look at this pic taken in the afternoon when the sun was lower:

Everything turns to silver and you can't see below the surface at all - not the time to navigate into reefs! Here's a motor boat that got it wrong:

Whilst we were in the Holandes Cays two boats went aground. One dragged whilst on anchor, the other was coming down from Cartagena and entered the San Blas at 4am, with no charts and no navigation equipment. Not surprisingly they ran aground, luckily for them onto a sand bank not a coral reef. It was a 34 ft boat full of back packers trying to get to Panama City - remember there are no roads through the Isthmus of Panama, so it's either fly or come by boat. A big Australian Catamaran and two dinghies managed to pull them off a few hours later.

We met some lovely Canadians whilst in the Hot Tub, they've been spending the winter months in the San Blas on their boat for about 10 years now, so know it like the back of their hands. They were kind enough to show us some fantastic snorkelling sites - pictures in the next post!