Hi everyone. When last I wrote, we were on our way to the San Blas Islands, hoping to find beautiful anchorages and a slower pace. Well, the results have been mixed.

We arrived in the San Blas Islands on March 31 after an overnight passage from Portobello. We anchored between several very small village islands. The islands here are smaller and farther apart than I was expecting. We feel like we are anchored in a very open area, but the water is very calm because of the reef in all directions. Navigating in here required a sharp look-out and good light, and we'll need the same to get out. We had not been anchored very long before the first canoes approached us. They had molas to sell, so we invited them on board. Soon more canoes appeared in the distance, all heading our way. Over the following few days, we got to look at a lot of molas. Many of the molas we didn't like because they seemed very generic. After looking at many molas, we found we liked the larger, more intricate designs, often on a dark red background. Each of the women (and the few men) said that their molas were all hand made, but we have heard that some of the larger villages now have sewing machines.

The next day we went to the island/village of Soledad Mandinga. The previous day Michael had gotten to talking with a young man named Lenny, who lived there and invited us to come. Lenny spoke Spanish as well as Kuna, and was not shy about using his Spanish. All the kids learn Spanish in school, but not very many of them spoke to us. When we went ashore, Lenny was there to meet us, and he took us to meet the village chief, the silah. Lenny introduced us to the silah, and we presented the silah with a bag of rice and asked his permission to visit the village. The silah was a tiny old man, not even as tall as Vienna. He gave us permission to walk around the village, and then asked us (all through our interpreter Lenny) if we could give him some ointment for an infected area on his shoulder. I pulled out the first aid kit and passed over a tube of Neosporin-like cream. He seemed pleased, and we set off with Lenny for a tour of the village.

Our next stop was the school. Lenny must have told the teacher we were coming because the teacher was expecting us. School was out for the day, but the teacher welcomed us in to one of the classrooms and told us a lot (in Spanish) about the school, the village, and the Kuna in general. There are about 400 people who live on this tiny island, about the size of a city block in Port Townsend, and about 55 kids in the 2 room primary school there. The younger kids are taught by a Kuna teacher in the Kuna language, and one of their subjects is Spanish. The older grades are all taught in Spanish because the curriculum materials that come from the government are all in Spanish.

The province of Panama where the Kuna live is called Kuna Yala. The Kuna are said to be the descendants of the feared Carib Indians. Kuna Yala includes the 370 islands of the San Blas archipelago as well as a narrow band of land along the coast. The Kuna send representatives to the federal government, but for the most part they are self-governing. Many of the islands where they live are quite isolated. Many of the Kuna live on the islands and go everyday to the mainland to farm, sailing or paddling their dugout canoes to get there. They farm just to feed themselves, not for commercial sale. Their main commercial crop is coconuts, which they sell to trading ships from Columbia. Many of the islands cooperatively own other islands where they plant and care for the coconuts. Families take turns living on the coconut islands, and that family gets to keep the money earned during their turn. Soledad Mandinga and the other 3 islands that we could see from our boat are so built up with little thatch houses that there is no room for a single tree there.

The newer method of earning hard cash is by selling molas. Molas are elaborate panels of reverse applique and stitchery that form the front and back panels of the women's blouses. It is speculated that the mola designs are similar to those that were painted on the body before the missionaries insisted that the Kuna wear clothing. Over the past 10 years, this has been an increasingly important source of revenue for the Kuna as this art form has become recognized. We have read a few accounts from people who visited the San Blas 10 years ago and have returned recently. These articles tell of increasing pressure on tourists to buy molas that are of a lower quality than previously seen. We certainly felt this when we had 5 or 6 canoes hanging on the side of our boat, each with at least 2 women holding up 5-gallon buckets of molas, all clamoring for our attention. The impact of tourism, both positive and negative, is something we have thought about a good deal over the past several months as we've traveled to what were once very remote areas. More on this later.

Back in Soledad Mandinga, the schoolteacher put in a plea for assistance with the school. Apparently this village is relatively poor because they don't have many coconut trees. We promised to return the next day with some supplies for the school that we could pull together from our own stores. Before leaving Panama City, we had bought some extra pencils and school notebooks, anticipating this. Next on our tour of the island was the central square. Leaning against a large rack in the center of the square were perhaps 50 6' long poles. Most of them were carved into the shape of a person along one end. There were a few animal shapes as well. On the ground was a large pile of dried plants. The teacher explained that the plants were all medical plants collected by the traditional doctor of the village, and the poles were for ridding the village of bad spirits. Of course, we asked for more details about this. If there is bad luck in the village, the silah can call for a special multi-day ceremony to get rid of the evil spirits. The school teacher described it as a war. The people of the village, carrying the poles, stalk through the entire village, hunting down and banishing the evil spirits. After the poles are used for this ceremony, they must rest for 3 months before they can be used again.  It took a while for us to understand all this. The school teacher was speaking Spanish, and I found him somewhat hard to understand. Meanwhile, the girls were wandering around the village, followed by a crowd of kids. They found several houses with pet tiny green parrots, which they enjoyed holding. We were offered the chance to buy one, and despite some pleading by Vienna and Rhiannon, we politely declined.  

Only a few of the women tried to interest us in their molas while we were in the village, and one of them I really liked. We didn't have $10 with us, so I tried to bargain to get the mola for $9.25 and a bottle of nail polish, but she wouldn't accept that.  We had stocked up on a few items like nail polish, lip stick, and school supplies before coming to the San Blas, having read that these were good trading items. However, now the women seem to want cash only. There was very little if any bargaining or trading. So I told the woman that if she came out to the boat in a couple hours, I would buy that mola for $10. As soon as we returned to Atalanta, the canoes started coming again, and my special mola showed up a couple hours later.

The next day was the day of first aid. Fairly early in the morning, a elderly man and his wife came by in their canoe. He climbed aboard to show us a significant burn on his leg, which he said was from a fire. The leg was blistered, but none of the blisters were open. He wanted some ointment to put on it, but we wrapped it loosely in gauze, and told him that soon the blisters would break open by themselves. At that point he should keep it covered, keep it very clean and go to the clinic if there were any signs of infection. The nearest health care clinic was on a larger island a couple hours away, so it didn't seem likely that he would be able to go there. If he couldn't get to the clinic, he should ask the silah for some of the antibiotic ointment we had given him. Shortly after he left, Lenny arrived to say his father had broken his leg and asked for our help. Michael set off in the dinghy to investigate and deliver some supplies we had gathered to the school. Soon he was back to report that Lenny's dad appeared to have sprained his ankle. We took an ACE wrap and went back to the village to wrap the ankle for him. Nothing was broken, his circulation was good, and the ankle was only minimally swollen, so I wrapped it up and gave him some basic instructions for the next several days.

The following day, we had planned to go with Lenny to visit their farm on the mainland, but the sky was so overcast that we didn't think we could safely move the boat any closer to the mainland through the coral. So we apologized to Lenny, and followed our GPS track out of that anchorage. We traveled a couple hours to the Holandes Cays. We arrived to find the boats Dagmar and Josephine already there. The water was a beautiful aquamarine color, and the beach was an arch of white sand. As soon as the boat was safely anchored, we got our snorkeling gear and all swam to the beach. What a beautiful and relaxing spot! We looked forward to a few days there.

But it was not to be. On the weather forecast, we heard of an approaching cold front. If we left promptly, we could get to Providencia before the cold front and associated high winds arrived. If we didn't leave, we might be there for another week or so before the next weather window came up. So, with a heavy sigh, we left the next morning. We wanted to be somewhere that celebrated Easter so we could participate in any Easter celebrations. Dagmar and Josephine also left, and Tioga left at the same time from a different anchorage in the San Blas.

Our passage to Isla Providencia lasted about 40 hours, and it was horrible. We were sailing hard on the wind the whole way. The sails were sheeted in as tightly as possible, the lines were groaning with the strain, we were heeled over at least 20 degrees, and the waves were banging against the hull as we pounded into them. It was noisy, uncomfortable, and difficult to do anything at all. Just imagine cooking dinner under those circumstances. But if we had waited, it might have been worse with the approaching storm front. The only possible positive thing to say about this passage was that it was fast. We averaged 6.5 knots for the entire passage. That's the pace of a slow jog, but for our boat, it's fast.

Our first day in Providencia, we stayed on the boat and rested. The Port Captain and various immigration officials came out to the 4 boats to check us in. The next day we met the Tiogas for a walk around town. Our first job was to get money, since we were now in Colombia. The one bank in town was closed, and the only ATM wasn't giving us money for any of our bank or credit cards. Luckily we still had US dollars, and we could pay at the grocery store in dollars and get Colones back in change. I'm sure it was a poor exchange rate, but it was our only option. The next day (we're up to April 8 now), we rented motor scooters with the Tiogas and zipped around the island for the afternoon, 1 kid and 1 adult per scooter. We found a nice beach, good pizza for lunch, and an expensive fruit stand on the way back to town. Since this fruit was much better quality than anything at any of the grocery stores in town, we spent all the Colones we had on fruit.

The next day was Good Friday, and in the afternoon we went into town for a stations of the cross procession. Townspeople represented each of the important figures, including Jesus, the guards, and the weeping women. The kids were quite solemn and impressed as it all looked very realistic. The guards yelled and beat Jesus, they tied him to the cross, and when they lifted him off the cross at the end,he really looked dead. The procession ended at the church, and we attended the evening service.

The next day we died our Easter eggs and baked a cake for the joint birthday celebration for Vienna and Chris. On Easter Sunday, Vienna and Rhiannon for eggs in the morning. Later in the afternoon we rafted Atalanta and Tioga for dinner and birthday cake. The adults ate up top, and the kids partied down below. They were playing music and dancing until way past their usual bedtime!

On Monday morning we departed Providencia bound for the Bay Islands of Honduras. A cold front was approaching a few days away, and we did not want to be stuck in Providencia until that front passed, potentially another week. So we set off on another windward, uncomfortable passage, watching the weather for news of the approaching front. (We get weather information via email and also listen to a weather forecast on the radio every morning.) After a day and a half, it appeared that the cold front was approaching faster than originally forecast, so we stopped at the Cayos Vivarillos instead of going all the way to Guanaja (the first of the Bay Islands). The Vivarillos are small cayes that belong to Nicaragua, but there are no permanent residents there, just the occasional fisherman. The cold front passed over the next morning, with lots of rain and high winds. Unfortunately, the high winds kept up for the next four days. We tried to go snorkeling one afternoon, but by the time everyone was ready, the wind was rising again, the sky was clouding over, Joel cut his toe stepping on something sharp,and Vienna was getting cold. So that was the end of that plan. Rhiannon and I swam back to Atalanta from Tioga, and that was the extent of our excursion for the day.

Getting a bit tired of this (although we did enjoy the forced down time to read, bake cookies, and work on projects), we set off for the Bay Islands on April 18. We stopped at French Harbor on the island of Roatan. Despite being part of Honduras, many people here are English-speaking, claiming descent from British pirates. We enjoyed staying at a dock for 2 nights, went out for dinner, swam in the pool, and stocked up on groceries (very expensive!). Then in a lovely afternoon sail (the first in a long time) we moved around to the West End of Roatan, where we stayed for the next 4 days. Roatan is well-known among scuba divers, so one morning Michael and I took a divers' re certification class. It had been so long since we'd been diving that we thought we needed to brush up a bit before venturing out into the deeps. The refresher class was a good idea, and then we went with a dive master on a 40 minute dive. (Vienna and Rhiannon, meanwhile, are making pirate maps on Tioga.) We saw lots of coral and fish, and altogether it was quite a satisfactory reintroduction to diving. We liked it so much we went diving again the next day, but taking turns this time.

We could have stayed another week there enjoying the diving, but once again, it was time to move on. We left Roatan at 6 PM on April 25 for an overnight trip to Half Moon Caye, our first stop in Belize.  

Coming soon: Belize and Mexico!