It's abit weird. When we arrived in the anchorage we had chosen, we noticed that there were no dinghies attached to the many surrounding yachts, no-one around on their yachts and no flags on any of the yachts. It's like a ghost town anchorage. Now either there has been a party on shore that we didn't know about, which is unlikely because the Kunas like visitors to be off the islands after dark or.... or..... or....well, I just don't know. There are only three islands in the vicinity and there was no sign of life or dinghies on the beach. So, after going snorkelling for a little bit after school and still not seeing anyone, Lochy Whit and I decided to explore the islands. The first we approached had a vicious looking dog barking as we approached "let's try another island!" The next had a sign saying "private property" in English, which is strange as there is supposedly no private property in San Blas. The third one, we landed on. It looked from a distance a very beautiful idyllic island. As we approached we could see that the beach was made up almost entirely of rubbish, plastic bottles and flip flops. Really upsetting to see how spoiled these islands have become. We continued with our exploring until we noticed we were getting bitten alive by no-see-ums at which point we beat a hasty retreat, then realising why there were so many flipflops on the beach - probably left behind as visitors rushed to get off the beach and back into their dinghy.
This has been the first day where I have needed to sleep in front of a fan at lunchtime just because it is so darn hot. After lunch, we headed back to Isla Elsie as tomorrow we are going on a river tour with a Kuna - Justino - who advised us the quickest way to get to his island. As we approached, we were flagged down by four Kunas who had run out of petrol (or were just looking for a tow to save petrol) As we towed them towards the island, we hit an underwater reef (not a pretty one - just a bunch of rocks) at which point the Kunas jumped into the water and standing up to their waists, pushed us back off the reef and into the deeper water. Hopefully no damage done (except to our pride) but we will need to check fully tomorrow as the sun was setting as we dropped anchor and were accosted by about four boats selling molas and asking us to charge their mobile phones.
I'm really annoyed that we hit the underwater reef as we have been super careful with our navigation, however, the light was low and I guess we shouldn't have taken the advise of someone whose boat draws about 50 cms!! Whilst we were abit peed off at first that the men might be taking the mick, asking for a tow, in the end we were so grateful that they were there as they didn't hesitate to jump in the water and push us off and then one of them came aboard and navigated us through the narrow channel safely into deeper water. Current position: 9.31.15N 79.03.27W