St. Maarten to the San Blas Islands

After weeks and weeks of heavy maintenance and hard work, we finally cast off from Fort Louis Marina, St. Maarten, heading to the San Blas Islands off the southern Atlantic coast of Panama.  And because we were escorted away from the West Indies by a small pod of dolphins, I knew it would be a nice passage.  

We had 1100 nautical miles worth of downwind sailing in light winds.  We caught two fish (a yellow-fin tuna and mahi mahi) and saw two pods of dolphins.

 

 We arrived to the San Blas Islands around 5:30 PM on the 28^th of April. 
 

At first sight it felt like we were back in time.  The San Blas Islands consist of 340 islands, and are home the indigenous Kuna Indians.  It is truly amazing that this wonderful group of people have been able to conserve their culture and traditions over hundreds of years, when the mainland of Panama is just miles away, and fancy boats like us come and go.  The only real sight of anything modern that I noticed is their sandy airstrip on the Island of Povenir, solar panels here and there, and the engines off the back of their traditional boats. 

The airport runway.

Most of the islands we saw were very small and had just a handful of homes on them.  Some islands even had just one!  The homes are small, square, and are roofed with local palm.  Most Kuna do not have electricity, therefor the islands are extremely quiet and peaceful.

 Shortly after we dropped anchor we were greeted by a Kuna family, who had paddled out in their traditional dugout canoe, which had been chipped and carved by hand. 
 

The woman, who I assumed was the mother of the two younger girls who accompanied her, came aboard to sell her handmade artifacts.  Kuna are famous for their molas, which are made of cutting and sewing layers of fabric, often depicting local animals in the jungle or of the sea.  The Kuna sew these molas onto a blouse or shirt, but they sell the squares for tourists to use it as they want.  They are quite beautiful, and are an important part to the Kuna economy.  I purchased a few of them, but from a different Kuna who’s molas were much higher quality.  In fact, he had been sewing molas for 36 years, and told me it took him 3 months to make just one! 

High quality molas

The next day we were approached by a whole squad of Kuna saleswoman.  I didn’t purchase anything from the ladies, but they sure tried.  One lady went as far and shoving a mola that I’m pretty sure was made for a child, over my head.  She was laughing the whole time.

Unfortunantly our time in the San Blas was short lived.  After two nights we set off for Colon to deal with the beurocracy of crossing the Panama Canal.