Flavia & Gregory go LA

The Roxy lived up to our expectations in all senses - it was a very good boat and I suffered severe sea sickness throughout the voyage, the whole 36 hours of it. If I think that El Joshua would have done the same stretch over three days, I guess I should not complain too much...
Apart from the sea sickness, everything else went really well. We got the biggest available cabin, with a double bed and really comfortable, and a nice bunch of people travelling with us. It was Ulf and Christine, the boat owners (Swedish), plus 4 other passengers in addition to us: Alison and Jennifer from Canada, and David and Evelyn from France and Switzerland.
Ulf and Christine are retired and have been sailing on their new boat for a couple of years now. They really like Cartagena and San Blas and so they have decided to stop here for a while and take backpackers back and forth to get some spending money together, but especially to mix with a different bunch of people and get some company- it sounded like they were a bit fed up to discuss water pumps performance with other sailors... Best choice! None of us had a clue about sailing and boats. They served us really good quality food throughout, with freshly squeezed orange juice every morning, beef fillet and giant crab!!

So we spent the first two nights and one whole day at sea, and then we had two days in the San Blas archipelago, which is a long stretch of tiny islands to the north-west of Panama, in the Caribbean sea. The San Blas islands are also known as Kuna Yala and they belong to an indigenous community called the Kuna. The Kuna have obtained governamental independence from Panama and are very autonomous and culturally separated from the rest of the Panamians - they do not like to mix with outsiders at all and have a very distinctive culture and traditions.

In San Blas we went to visit 2 different snorkelling spots - Coco Bandero and Dog Island, the latter with a really nice ship wreck. The coral reef in San Blas is very healthy and there are a lot of different corals and fish.
When we first arrived in the San Blas islands, our first impression of the local Kuna people was not very pleasant. It seemed to be a dollar-per-step economy, where they were approaching us constantly wanting to sell fish, molas (their local weavings), asking for money to snorkel the wreck, to put down the anchor, you name it. We had just started to have enough when Ulf took us to one of the inhabited islands and we had a chance to get to meet them in their homes. While from the boat the islands look absolutely overcrowded and dirty, when you actually see them from within they are really neat and tidy and after the first 2 minutes of them expecting $1 per each photo taken, they relaxed and it turns out that they are actually very friendly and pleasant people. The old lady in the hammoc below did not even want us to take a picture, and once we had sat down and started chatting and looking at the molas etc and bought a couple, she started jumping around smiling and joking.

Things went really well and we had a chance to both snorkel and meet the Kuna. The weather was very changeable and generally overcast - it let us swim and get a bit of sunburn but denied us a barbecue on the islands, which could have been very nice. At times we felt that the journey was too organised, in that Ulf obviously had taken this whole business of transporting travellers very seriously (he is a very professional person) and planned everything quite carefully, like getting to the islands at a specific time, having the mola top vendor to show up promptly, visiting the local community etc. Somehow we don´t think that this would have all been so smooth if we had gone with Freddy, who on the other hand would have probably made the whole thing more spontaneous and unpredictable. Possibly more fun too, but certainly not as comfortable as we had it.

Overall, we had a great trip. From San Blas we had to take a small boat up the river for 40 minutes or so, and then a jeep all the way to Panama City though Panama´s virgin forest, which was also quite enjoyable and gave us the opportunity to travel through some primary forest.

Here are the usual pics -

Our group

Ulf and Christine


One of the islands of Coco Bandero

Dog Island with tip of wreck emerging from the water

Alison, Jennifer and Christine cleaning the giant crabs

Kuna village

The molas