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Published: January 20th 2008
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After arriving in Panama City, I made friends with a few people in my hostel and we decided to take a small adventure to stay with a family in the San Blas islands. The islands are part of the Kuna Yala province, and are governed by the Kuna people themselves. Although the men wear western clothes, the women still dress traditionally with hundreds of beads covering their arms and legs, and colourful outfits with detailed sewing around the waists.
We didn't really know what to expect from the trip. We knew we were paying just over 12 pounds a day for all our meals, our room and boat trips to different islands.
A jeep picked us up at our hostel and 5.30 in the morning (yikes!) for what we were told would be a 3 and a half hour ride to the coast where we'd then get a boat to our island. I slept for the first hour or so as we drove on normal roads, but then was awoken as we started driving on the muddiest roads I've been on in my life! The jeep got stuck in the mud for over an hour, then every time we
got to the bottom of a muddy hill we had to get out of the jeep and walk up barefoot so that it was light enough not to get stuck. In the end the journey took over 6 hours!
Although many of the islands are uninhabited, there are a few that are choc-a-bloc with homes, and we were staying on one of those called Carti. As we sailed up to a dock, I saw lots of really small huts that were sticking out into the water. I realised later that these were toilets! There is no sewerage system here- just a sheet of wood with a hole in over the ocean! It was really distracting and very bizarre trying to have wee while you can see fish swimming beneath you! Needless to say, people don't swim in the water around these islands! Ick!
On the boat there, we were discussing what the sleeping arrangements would be- would we all be in the same room, would there be seperate rooms etc etc. When he showed us our hut I really thought it was a joke! It was a bamboo hut with a dirt floor and nothing in it but
a crate to put our rucksacks on! None of us wanted to be rude so when our host asked if it was ok we said it was fine- we thought we had to sleep on the floor!!!! Luckily, he put some hammocks up for us later- phew! The only problem was that there were loads of gigantic spiders in the rafters and we were so worried that they'd fall on us in the night! Luckily I had my mosquito net with me (first time I've used it!) which made me sleep a bit easier!
In the afternoon it was time to visit some of the islands, and I've never seen anything like them in my life! They were sooooooo beautiful!! Definitley worth the basic accomodation to see! Some of them have 1 hut built where a family lives, but a lot of them have nothing on them but palm trees! Most of the time, we were the only 3 people there! The sand was white and the sea was clear and turquoise- I didn't think that islands like that really existed!
Randomly, we'd arrived on the day of a festival called the 'Chee-cher' festival. Not sure how you
spell it, but it is some sort of locally made spirit. When they were first telling us about it I thought it was a 'teacher' festival !!!! It was so bizarre- we went to some sort of village hall in the early evening where we were told that we would see some local dancing. There was no music- just 2 old men standing in the middle of the room holding something which looked like an instrument (which they weren't playing!) and basically moaning and groaning off key notes. The kuna people were then dancing around in partners which was quite funny to watch, as most of the men were so drunk that they kept messing up the moves!
On the second day we had another day of gorgeous weather- the first time I'd had good weather luck on the Carribean! It was so nice to have a few days just chilling out on the beach. It was definitely my favourite beach location of my trip so far!
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Lucy
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Paradise
Oh Soph, am so jealous now - those islands really do look like Paradise! How will you ever manage to tear yourself away from there?!!! xxxx