February San Blas Panama

We started what we expected to be a two week cruise working our way up the coast from Mulutupu just north of the Colombia-Panama border into what is referred to as the Western San Blas. There we would check in at Porvenir the very last port in the San Blas before you enter Panama proper. It is possible to check in on the Colombian- Panamanian border at Oblida but then the clock starts ticking on your ninety day immigration status so it makes sense to take your time coming in from Colombia. Many boats are in a transit limbo for weeks if not months and while the practise of taking your time is frowned on, at most there is a mild slap on the hand from immigration in the form of a fine of twenty dollars, certainly making the price right. At home or in the states this kind of behaviour would get you locked up. It also highlights the ease in which runners of contraband flourish. We entered at Pinos in what is called the Eastern San Blas and while some islands lay inside the reefs there certainly isn’t the protection offered by the islands further to the northwest which lay behind a reef system with only a couple of major openings. Sailing in the tropics is tricky requiring diligence and good light, preferably directly over head or behind you. We have learned not to count solely on the charts, using our eyes and depth sounder as much as anything, especially electronic charting. It’s not unusual to find yourself sailing across dry land according to the chart plotter. Morning skies have been a flat dull overcast till noon when it usually burns off. Instead of being depressed about it we found a sense of relief from the hot sun. Anyways most afternoons are spent in some sort of post lunch siesta stupor where a short read turns into a duelling snore session.



We left Mulutupu at first light and took the sea route around the Isla Pinos heading up to Estupu area not knowing exactly where we would put in. Estupu is the largest of the Kuna villages at close to 5000 people and a couple of real concrete block buildings, but after Mulutupu we were looking for something smaller. The islands here lay close to the mainland and all the rivers that empty into the sea make the water cloudy and a bit brackish but quite fine for swimming. The Indians moved the greater part of their population off the mainland generations ago to get away from the bugs on the mainland as well as for defence. Each morning there is a daily commute in their ulus (dugout canoes) to the mainland where they tend to their small jungle farm plots growing mangoes, coconuts, bananas and plantains. The insects leave nothing to the imagination but the only ones that are a source of irritation are the no seeums (sand flies) which are only a problem on board when the wind disappears, a rare occurrence during the winter when the trades are blowing steady. The sail up from Pinos was mostly a motor sail with only the main hoisted. This is one of your more common ways of getting around. Your main is hoisted and since the wind is on the nose a lot you just point up to a few degrees off and then you get a big lift picking up speed. Pure sailing would require a set of close hauled beats here as high as you can point and then tacking form port to starboard through the wind. Great if you have a lot of time and a lot of room to run out on each leg but a little impractical in unfamiliar reef strewn waters. At the island of Mamitupu we found an anchorage behind the village which had extra protection provided from the barrier reefs further out. The village is on a small island just off shore opposite the mouth of a river which provides the road up country to the farm plots. There is also a small airstrip on the mainland built with a series of other small strips down the coast by the Americans during world war two. These are the quickest way in and out of these islands with a short hop over the mountains to Panama City. Villages are supplied by Colombian trading boats which ply the coast purchasing and bartering for coconuts and scrap aluminum (beer and pop cans). In return they haul canned goods, diesel, some basic house goods and the like. There are also official Kuna trading boats bringing in suppliers like cooking gas bottles and the like from the Colon area. These all seem to be painted an official blue.

The main fella here to see is Pablo who once was married to an English woman. The marriage ran into problems when the couple returned to Panama from England when the missus wasn’t accepted fully by the village. Kuna do not intermarry although like this one, there is the odd case. Pablo explained to me that today his former wife has gained a degree of acceptance grudgingly won over the years and makes annual trips back to visit. We have also seen a number of albino natives which must have something to do with the no outsider marriage taboo. When in Manitupu we watched the kids playing volleyball just outside of the congress (the village’s town hall). The girls were demolishing the boys and I kept thinking, man those girls have big shoulders when (I am showing my age) it suddenly dawned on me part of the team was transvestite.
This is an old practise here and just part of a very open society. So much for our culture's sense of leading edge social practises. In the Bauhaus guide Pablo is mentioned for his coconut press but after showing it us he explained he is not using to anymore it is economically unfeasible. He also runs a small tourist hotel. The hotel is the same structure as a village house and you sleep in a hammock and get a river trip to look for salt water crocs amongst other things. This is the extent of tourism here, very low brow being sold as a form of eco tourism with individual villages hosting a small set up and a little less than American pricing. The visitors must fly in. Certainly not your typical all included. There are also charter boats here. They are all captained, no bareboat chartering, understandable with all the reefs and no yard facilities. I could hear the insurance company’s whinge already.
We stayed for a few days enjoying one short river hike following the trail along the water pipes to the local cemetery which is located on the river on an opposite bank. The Kuna run their water from the mainlined to their offshore islands through a basic pipe system. They simply run a type of PVC pipe up into the mountains along a river till the elevation is higher than the tank they store in. Pablo explained to us that every year the pipe breaks during the rainy season usually where it crosses the river because of the rushing currents during rainy season. The cost is usually several hundred dollars a year to fix. The anchoring fee we paid here was five dollars and is one of the only ways the villagers have to raise hard currency. There are two sailing guide chartlet books for this area. The older Ziedler edition and the more common Eric Bauhaus because its charts are colour coded as well as being accompanied by air photo charts with routing. Both are good. After a week we decided to start up to the western San Blas. We were experiencing some VHF radio problems and a trip up the mast look inescapable. The charts showed a calm well protected mangrove anchorage at Mono Island so we decided to haul up and head that way. <
To be continued