Panama - Days 1-7

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The main point of this trip was to fulfil a long held wish to visit Colombia, but it would be too easy to just fly there so I arranged to travel my boast from Panama City via the San Blas Islands. My flight to Panama City took me via Atlanta.

My taxi driver that I had pre-booked from the hostel obviously had better things to do on a Friday night so decided to do that rather than pick me up so I had to get a taxi from the airport, which delivered me to the Hostel just in time for a few beers before I hit the sack (even though it was equivalent to 04:00 in the morning UK time.

The first thing I had to do the next morning was get some money, which was easier said than done because the bank decided to suspend my account as soon as I tried to withdraw money from Panama, so I had to send a text to them to be able to withdraw my own money!

Once I had some finances I caught a cab to the Panama Canal at Miraflores which must be the highlight of any trip to the city. The canal passes through the width of Panama but this is the best place to see it and there is a museum and a chance to see a supertanker a few metres in front of you.

The next day I had a wander round the old colonial city, a policeman asked to take a picture of me to which I obliged and then I attended the pre-meet with the San Blas Adventures team, there were 34 of us travelling to Colombia via the San Blas Islands. There are no roads between Panama and Colombia so the only way to get there is by boat or plane. The infamous Darien gap is between the two countries and in addition to dense tropical jungle, there are humorous things that will try and kill you from the military and guerrillas (FARC etc) to deadly snakes and some of the worst mosquitoes you can want to come cross. There are two methods of sailing, via a speed boat (which I chose) which greatly reduces the sailing time and you sleep on the islands or via a yacht which does include a 2 day open water crossing. In the summer months (Oct-Mar) this can be very rough, there are loads of horror stories on the internet about these yachts but I guess it is all down to the look of the draw. In my hostel I found a new chum who’s yacht departure was delayed by 3 days due to rough weather. I bumped into her later and she said the sailing was fine and the seas were calm. Another chum on the speedboat had originally chosen a yacht but it ran aground and partly sank the previous week and the travellers had to swim to a nearby island to be rescued.

The next day I was up at 05:00 to get by ride to the boat, this was a nightmare journey, first of all they juggled us about in different jeeps for an hour so we didn’t actually leave Panama city till around 07:30. Then after an hour we hit the mountains and were in for a 2 hour stomach churning ride through hairpin turns until we finally arrived at the boats. After a couple of hours journey we were rewarded with lunch on a beautiful deserted tropical island. The water was beautiful and amazingly warm, I could have swam there all day but after lunch it was time to pack up and head for another tropical island which would be our place of rest for the night in a hammock!

Once we had picked our hammocks and dumped our gear it was time for a game of beach football on pure white sands. As usual the game did get quite competitive and there were a few injuries sustained, I had a huge bruise on my shin for the rest of the trip. The game did have to be halted a few times when a misdirected shot ended up in the ocean heading for Panama until someone had to swim to fetch it back. It was all worth it though as my team won in the end.

That night everyone except me and one other feasted on lobster – they were like animals there was carcases and claws all over the table! We all then proceeded to get very drunk on rum and beer.

The next day we headed off to visit another beautiful island for lunch and then visited another island where we would stay with the indigenous Kuna tribe that have autonomy over the San Blas Islands, they love in grass huts and spend most of their time out on the sea, sometimes under paddle power alone. Our introduction to the Kuna didn’t go down at all well when one of our group thought it would be a good idea to climb onto a statue of a local hero in the town square to get his photo took, if this wasn’t bad enough he was shirtless which was another indiscretion when walking round the village. At this point an elderly Kuna villager starting shouting at our wayward one to which his response was “no problem” over and over again which only made the situation worse. This set back Kuna-Croat relations 50 years!!

That night we proceeded to get very drunk again, this time with the help of numerous drinking games.

The next day we visited more beautiful islands and stayed in another Kuna village and then got drunk again!

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Comments

[David Tasker]

Happy Traveller
Once again you surprise me - on the road again I see. 9 years later (Morocco) you finally get to a place or two I have been to LOL - Panama, San Blas Islands and Santa Marta - All good spots.