1 of 400 odd islands in the San Blas. This one was in Snug Harbour

We cautiously approached the road less isthmus that joins Central America with South America known as the Darien Gap and made landfall after a 36 hour sail from Cartagena at the unspoilt archipelago of the San Blas Islands. Before arrival we had been encased in a 4 hour downpour reducing visibility to virtually zero.

However, the small palm fringed coral islands soon unfolded in the Playon Chico area and we navigated our way around the reefs using the Bauhaus electronic charts and fortunately they were spot on.

We were last in this vicinity in 1983 when we walked, muled, and canoed from Turbo in Colombia to El Real on the Pacific side of Panama. This was a 12 day journey of dripping rainforests, tranquil rivers and encounters with jaguars or tigres as they call them here. It was unlikely we would have ever glimpsed this haven as we were about 50 miles inland as we crossed between the two great oceans.

One luxury motor yacht was anchored in the large expanse of water called Snug Harbour when we dropped anchor but apart from that there was nothing else but the luxuriant rainforest backdrop and some delightful palm covered, uninhabited islands.

We have since our arrival met a number of Kuna locals in dugout canoes that paddled out from the village of Playon Chica a mile or so away. One sold us bananas and local bread, another a lobster and the third asked for a $10 anchoring fee and said we could stay for a day, a week, a month or a year and no more to pay. He came out with a very official looking receipt book did hid business and then paddled back to the village. Certainly a far cry from the suffocating bureaucracy Colombia dishes out where the Port Captain wants something, the customs want something and immigration wants something let alone the compulsory agent he or she wants something too. Not sure what we would have done if we had forgotten to bring US dollars as there are no ATM machines to be found.

One thing we don't need to worry about here and that is theft. No pulling the dinghy up at night as we had to Cartagena and for that matter in many of the Caribbean islands.

We have been here three days now and have walked along deserted beaches and visited the village to buy a sim card. Yes - there is a cell phone tower popping up off a nearby island! We've gone snorkelling a number of times on a nearby reef and been on an escorted boat trip in our dinghy up a nearby creek with our new friend Arkin. Arkin gave us a conch shell to 'ward off tormentas' some bananas, bread and sold us one of his wife's molas. We reciprocated and gave him a shirt, some fishing line, some hooks, a small knife and two little solar lights we used when camping in the U.S. Arkin has been teaching us some Kuna and we've been teaching him some English!

It does help to speak Spanish here as little understandable English is spoken and as Spanish is the Kunas' second language they are comparatively easy to understand. Today we intend to go for walk, visit the village and perhaps a snorkel later on. It's all so reminiscent of the 10 years we spent in PNG where there are uncertain boundaries between traditional and modern.

The San Blas Islands, of course, have never been really isolated through history as this coastline has been a haven for mercenaries, misfits, missionaries and adventurers for centuries and with such sheltered anchorages nestled amongst the islands and reefs many a mariner will have set foot on these islands in years gone by either to seek refuge from a summer storm, grab a refreshing coconut from one of the thousands swaying in the breeze or to hide booty to collect at a later date.

Sir Francis Drake, a buccaneer of Queen Elizabeth 1st era, ransacked the main Spanish colony not far away from here in a bay called Nombre de Dios in his determination to grab Spanish bounty on the Queen's behalf - not long after sacking Cartagena in Colombia. He apparently died of dysentry just off the coast and he was supposedly buried in a lead coffin with some of the plunder but no one has been able to find the remains. No doubt there are a few galleons lying in Davy Jones full of plundered booty.

Apart from all the chaos of those early days, tranquility exists here albeit because no doubt the Americans resisted the temptation to support extending the inter-American highway to link south with north.



Langostina



Playon chico village



Traditional sailing canoe



In the rio with Arkin