January, to the San Blas

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“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away”
Emily Dickenson



I blame all on the library. Somewhere buried deep in my memory, way back in my personal Jurassic, I must have laid my hands on a book or maybe it was even a movie which fired the beginnings of my juvenile imagination and set the tone for a lifetime of reading and hankering to be out there. In my case the two big events were the British conquests by sea and the opening up of the North American continent by the coureur des bois and later fur traders. The giants of the first epoch for me were men like Drake for his natural leadership qualities and in a lesser light William Dampier for his curiosity and power of observations, despite his reputation as a cowardly cut throat opportunist (one of many incidents had Dampier involved in the marooning of Alexander Selkirk, later fictionalized by Defoe in Robinson Crusoe one of the first modern novels). Now I was capitalizing on one of the big advantages our mode of travel offers by heading to the spot along the same route where Drake and Dampier had gained a large part of their notoriety, the remote San Blas, accessible only by air or water

One of the most famous of all the hidden pirate and privateer rendezvous, the Eastern San Blas is a section of the Darien Gap, that large roadless wilderness that separates Panama from Colombia and by extension separates the Americas. Adventurers from Drake forward used this tropical archipelago as a refuge to sortie from on raids against the Spaniards. These off shore islands difficult to navigate act not only as natural hideout but for the same reasons make surprise attack difficult. Sadly there are few if any historical markers to see except the islands themselves. On the other hand, other than the drone of the occasional clutch cargo type plane or the whine of a native’s outboard you are seeing exactly what those early adventurers did. In Drakes case his famous Fort Pheasant is believed to be the present day Kuna Village of Escoses. Isla Pinos a few miles away, was a famous rendezvous location, because of its visibility as a landmark as well as its easy accessibility. There are also ruins of the Scottish attempt to colonize Panama in the form of the Darien Company at St. Andrews, but increasingly hard to find with the relentless jungle creep. It was the bankrupting of this enterprise that brought Scotland to its financial knees ensuring political assimilation into Great Britain. Historically the east coast treasure hubs were Nombre de Dios and later Portobello roughly twenty miles and forty miles respectively from the northwest corner of the San Blas archipelago. Incas treasure was brought there overland from Panama City on the Pacific side either by a route that off loaded at the halfway point onto the Chagres River to come by water or directly along the jungle path. Shipments were then convoyed to Cartagena for the annual treasure fleet home to Spain. After Drake and others had ravaged Nombre de Dios the Spanish moved the treasure site to the secure natural harbour at Portobello establishing a treasure house and a series of forts to guard the harbour. Both were plundered numerous times and in many cases the pirates laid in rest somewhere in the San Blas or at Isla Pinos known to the indigenous Kuna Indians as Tupac or the whale.

We had left Isla Bernardo off the Colombian coast and made landfall at 8:00am the next day seeing the Isla Pinos from about ten miles out with its whale like shape. There were no dangers as we approached the island from the south side rolling up between it and the mainland. Along the north-west side of the island the channel is protected by a reef. The reef has a narrow entrance carrying ten feet of depth with breaking water on either side indicating the cut. The anchorage is very well protected on three sides with only a south-east wind leaving the bay exposed. We spent three days here anchored off a lush beach rimmed with coconut palms and back grounded with greenery to the hilltop where a radio tower perched. The first afternoon a Kuna came by and collected an eight dollar tax for anchoring. This is commonplace at all Kuna anchorages. The following day we dinghied into the village where we had to go to visit Mr. Lombardi the village Chief and get permission to walk around. He clipped us for another two dollars each and then tried to get us to buy a Kuna Yala flag for fifteen dollars. Of course all figures are in the American dollar which trades at the same value as the local currency the Balboa. The "you got to buy" line for the flag was that all yachts would have to exhibit it as well as the Panama flag when sailing in the San Blas. The Kuna Yala flag has a swastika in the middle. The swastika is an ancient native symbol and has no affiliation with Nazi Germany. But in today’s world where optics play such a leading role I thought it would be interesting to keep an eye out for any German flagged boats to see if they were going to fly it. The Chief introduced us to an older Kuna named Horatio Perez who befitting a seventy two year old slowly walked us around the island on a hike of three hours.
This set us back another two dollars each. In my case an old set of progressive eye glasses was thrown into the mix. By the third day the wind picked up and a slight swell was making the boats in the anchorage start to roll uncomfortably so we decided to head further south and visit the village of Mulutupu. The population of 3000 makes it the second largest Kuna Village. It was a short three mile trip but once we left the safety of the bay at Pinos it turned into a struggle with large short swells coming right on the beam. When we finally turned to starboard the swells picked us up and it became a surf board ride into the quiet bay behind the village which occupied a spit and sat very low to the seas. In fact the villages sit so low that flooding is now common place. The Kuna claim this is a recent development and of course you start to think of global warming. We got double clipped here on anchoring fees because the village is actually two, the result of some long ago forgotten dispute. One side hit us for ten and the other for five dollars. The five side though got us a village tour with Mr. Green who also had us and Equinox to dinner with his family at their hut. The hut is in a compound and the walls and palisades are all bamboo. The roofs are larger tree branches or logs acting as a ridge board and then thatched with large banana leaves or something similar. We were told depending on the leaf quality the life span of the roof is usually ten to fifteen years. Floors are dirt which is kept tidy by bush broom and everybody sleeps in hammocks.

Traditionally the families are run by the maternal side with the male moving into the female’s family home. After being introduced to the extended family we had a dinner of rice cooked in coconut water and bananas which was finished off with a coco (sweet) drink. All of our time was spent conversing in English so Mr. Green and his daughter could work on improving their command of our language. The Kuna speak their own language with the majority also speaking Spanish. Striving to have a third language can give you an indication of these people’s keenness and curiosity. The following night we reciprocated with a visit on Sea Cycle followed with dinner on Equinox where Dick pulled out pictures of a Maine winter which I am sure put the kibosh on any thoughts of immigration. Next morning we weighed anchor and weaved our way through the morning commute of Kuna paddling their canoes known as ulus to their farm plots on the mainland. We decided to head up the coast twenty miles starting the slow crawl to Porvenier where we would officially check into Panama
To be continued......