Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

Our final trip in Panama was to the San Blas islands, which is home to the Kuna Indians.  The Kuna are the only inhabitants on the San Blas islands, which comprises somewhere around 365 islands.  This area is similar to Indian reservations in the US in that they have they own set of laws and are not governed by the Panamanian government.  They highly restrict what visitors are allowed to do and where they are allowed to go when they come to their islands (many of the islands are uninhabited).  Each picture you take of a Kuna woman in traditional dress costs $1.00.  The Kuna women are the makers of Molas, traditional weavings sold all over Panama.  They also still wear their traditional clothing: a red and yellow scarf on their head, a blouse made out of one of their molas, a skirt, a gold ring in their septum and their legs are wrapped in beads.  See some pictures here: http://thorup.com/cuna.html

Molas for sell on Isla Pelicano, San Blas

Normally when people go to San Blas you pay one price per day which includes a hotel room, 3 meals per day and transportation to other islands for swimming and snorkeling.  We flew out to El Porvenir for 3 nights and took trips to 2 other islands – Dog Island and Pelicano.  The planes leave Panama City at 6:00 AM and it is just a short 30-minute flight in a tiny 25 passenger plane to the islands. 

The islands we visited were postcard perfect islands covered in palm trees and surrounded by white sand and crystal clear water.  These islands are the quintessential paradise island.  We spent 2 days on Dog Island, which has a ship wreck and great snorkeling just off shore.  The other day we spent on Pelicano which was roughly the size of half of a football field.  We slung our hammock between two palm trees, swam and snorkeled all day long. 

 

 

One evening we took a boat over to a Kuna community.  The entire island is covered in bamboo huts with roofs thatched with palm fronds.  It was interesting to walk through their community and see a bit of daily life.  The Kuna believe strongly in respecting nature and to use it only to survive.  They own a portion of land on the Panamanian mainland and leave it as untouched jungle.  They venture out there to hunt when they need to.  Most of their diet consists of food from the ocean and coconuts.  They barter with these commodities to acquire other goods.  One of the nicest things about this area is that there are no mega-resorts and extremely few tourists.  The Kuna are able to subsist on these islands without selling out their land for tourism.  As such it remains amazingly untouched, clean and preserved.

One other unusual thing about the Kuna is that they have the highest rate of albinism of any community in the world.  Roughly 1 out of every 200 births is an albino child.  We saw 3 albinos in the 3 days we spent here.  Albinos are treasured in this society.  Unusual since they look so out of place with their yellow hair, mangled mouths and pinkish skin. 

I’m sorry if this hasn’t made the most interesting blog entry.  It is hard to write about this experience.  A lot of what makes this place so special is learning about their Kuna society and then actually visiting the islands and spending some time there.  They inhabit one of the most beautiful places in the world and have been able to resist the change and development that so often occurs in spots like this (Acapulco, Cancun, etc.)  It’s probably best that you read a little about the Kuna.  The website I mentioned earlier gives a nice short summary.  After that take a look at some more pictures we put up on our flickr site.  Really, the pictures speak for themselves.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebays/ 

You really won’t believe what you see.  I look at them myself and I can’t believe we were actually in a place so spectacular. 

 

On Sunday evening we made it to Panama City and arrived at our friend’s house whom we met at the El Salvador border.  You might remember an earlier post of ours about a family of Hummer drivers that were required to pay many hundreds of dollars in bribes in order to get into Guatemala.  We’ve been in contact with them over e-mail and they offered us a free place to stay and we couldn’t pass them up.

The skyline of Panama City is very different from all the other Central American capitols – it is full of skyscrapers.  Most people advise to just pass through the capitols in Central America, but Panama City actually has some interesting sights to see.  One is the Panama Canal.  Our friends Fernando and Alegria live about 5 blocks from the Canal and we can here ships passing through the locks when they blow their horn.  We went up to the locks and watched a few container ships pass through one of the locks.  It’s kind of neat to think of all the goods that go through this canal and where they end up – probably quite a few of them end up in my living room.

Fernando and Alegria also have 3 boys ages 3, 5 and 6.  The first night we were here there was another family over for Sunday dinner with their son (age 31/2) so there were 6 boys all between the ages of 2 and 6.  6 little boys sure is a trip, but they all had so much fun playing together.  Sunday dinner was spectacular – typical homemade Latin food, rice, beans, ground beef with raisins and a soup made of some vegetable I’d never even seen.

We also took a bus ride around the city.  We were tying to get to a travel agency to book our flight to San Blas, but we got on the wrong bus and had a nice hour long tour through the city (including the old town) in one of the Red Devils (old American school buses painted in bright colors).  Last night we attended a free concert in one of the parks on traditional Panamanian folk music and dancing.  Alegria is really knowledgeable about the city and Panama and it was interested to hear her explain about the dancing and costumes of the dancers.  Plus the weather in the evenings is so pleasant it was just nice to be outside in the evening.

What has also been cool is taking rides in their 2 Hummers around the city.  One of their Hummers has a total of 4 TV screens.  At one point one of Alegria’s sons was upset because he couldn’t see the movie playing.  She said to him “There are 4 TV screens in this car and if you can’t see it I just don’t know what to tell you.”  I’ve never had the opportunity to ride in a Hummer, but I’ve had more rides in the last few days than most people will have in their lifetime.  It’s funny that we had to travel to the 3rd world to have that experience.

One of the most amusing things for me is that Fernando bears an uncanny resemblance to John Turturro – think of Jesus in the Big Lebowski.  Today when we went to the hardware store we saw Fernando’s Hummer parked outside, but he was no where to be found.  All of the sudden he appeared and was standing right next to us.  Two seconds later he was gone and his Hummer too.  Did you ever see that movie Mr. Deeds where John Turturro plays the sneaky butler that comes and goes without a sound?  The parallels between Fernando and this actor are crazy!

Our next stop is Isla Pelicano in the San Blas islands.  Today we picked up some rope and yesterday we bought a hammock to sling between palm trees on our island.  We fly out tomorrow morning bright and early at 6 AM and are staying for 3 nights.  From what I’ve heard about these islands I expect this might be one of the highlights of our trip.

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