Boat Passage, Dinner With The Kuna Queen

                                       "He gave the impression that very many cities had rubbed him smooth." 
                                        Graham Greene

Then the front of the boat suddenly
 lurched up and I hung  on to the
 stainless steel rail with a death

grip. 
Just as quickly, the boat  pitched down
 and came crashing  into a wave with a
shudder.   By dawn there was little left of
 me and I prayed for a  merciful  death.
David Rice Stranded In Chicken

Boat Passage, Dinner With The Kuna Queen
David Rice

It is not so much the look of a hostel that gets me to visit but where the hostel is located that will seal the deal when I am racing through a country. I found just such a place in San Jose, Costa Rica, a hostel not so attractive but one just across from the bus station where I could get an early shot to Panama City.

Once in Panama City I put into the Prima Vera Hostel and started a search for boat passage through the Kuna Island of San Blas to Columbia. I was flexible in my plans and would head to any area of South America but I expected that most boats would be headed for Cartegena.

Boat travel was preferred at this leg of the    trip because roads south of Panama through the Darien Gap are relatively non-existent.

According to various reports, any travel in the  Gap is dangerous. Over the years a few four wheelers have made the trip but several travelers through the Gap have been kidnapped and held for ransom.

The Darien Gap is just that, a gap in the Pan American Highway that runs from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina. The Gap is a ninety-mile stretch between Yaviza Panama and Turbo Colombia where there are no roads. 

The land south of Panama City is mountainous terrain that then levels to river delta and swampland. The area has never been developed. The isthmus south of Panama City is 30 miles wide and ninety miles long. The roads resume in Columbia but the only safe way to get from Panama City to Columbia is by boat or air.

I wanted to go by boat so I checked other hostel bulletin boards and finally found a note from a German guy who knew a Frenchman who owned a 

sailboat. The French captain was taking paying passenger to Cartagena out of desperation; he had run out of money while on a world cruise.

I emailed the captain and then waited while I enjoyed Panama City. There was so much to do and see in the lively place. The life of the city seethes on Avenue Espania where you can find anything: hostels, gambling casinos, girls, music, and street food. There is just a lot going on.

You also find the cheapest taxis anywhere: $2.00 for any trip, even a 45-minute ride to the airport.

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In the morning I caught a bus to the locks on the Panama Canal to watch the ships go through.  The normal sized boats go through in the morning and the supertankers go through in the afternoon. It is great watching the boats go through and imagining where they have been and where they are going, who is aboard, where do they come from, are they happy living every day at sea, what are their beliefs.

Welcome Aboard

The French sailboat captain responded via email after a day.

“Welcome aboard, meet at the docks near Colon in three days with all your luggage and we will leave.”

When I arrived at the port near a Spanish stone fortress, I could see the boat anchored in the bay at Portobello. I waved and soon realized that he saw me when he hopped into an inflatable and headed for the beach. Within minutes of our greeting, we headed out to his sailboat. With hardly a flourish he hauled anchor and me and three other passengers were underway headed for Cartagena, Colombia via the Archipelago de San Blas.

Pirates still roam the Caribbean and not the movie kind. These boat owners all have weapons aboard and although the captain never showed his, I suspected that the former kitchen equipment salesman from Paris was armed because I noticed that one cabinet on the boat always remained locked.

The trip was idyllic and I looked forward to a relaxing 5-day cruise.

 Idyllic that is for the first two hours. I have been on the water before but I am no sailor and had no idea when we set sail on the glassy waters of Colon Bay that before long the open ocean would turn our deck into such a frenzy of pitching and heaving that I would wish to die.

Once we hit rough water I spent the rest of the day and all of that night hanging over the side puking. When there was nothing left to throw up, I upchucked phlegm until I nearly dried up. The deck would roll to the side and I swear the mast would nearly smack the wave tops. Then the front of the boat would suddenly lurch up and I would hang on to the stainless steel rail with a death grip. Just as quickly, the boat would pitch down and come crashing into a wave with a shudder. By dawn there was little left of me and I prayed for a merciful death. As the sun rose, however, we came miraculously into the lee of an island and knifed through glass calm water. The captain dropped anchor in a sheltered cove.

I jumped into the jade lagoon with all my clothes on to clean up. I swam around the boat a few times trying to clean my shirt and within a few minutes, I couldn’t believe it but I felt well enough to think about breakfast.

That dunk in the lagoon turned out to be a timely spiff up for me because later in the day we would be invited to dine with a Queen.

 

Date With The Kuna Queen 

 I came aboard after my dunk in the water with my clothes cleansed of the nights nausea. After a change of clothes I went ashore with the other passengers to the Island of El Porvenir to get a needed stamp to clear customs. The captain radioed for a meeting with the customs inspector and then we waited and waited some more.

Waiting gave us the opportunity to small talk and I learned a little about my fellow passengers.

Four of us had started the trip, five including the captain. We lost one who headed back to Panama via the small airport on El Porvenir. The captain, in his early 60s, had forsaken the life of a businessman in Paris to sail around the world. He had bogged down in Panama City and was gathering resources by taking passengers to Columbia so he could continue his world cruise.

We also had a German guy, a guy from Holland, and a Canadian. They were all backpackers in their late 20s who, like many travelers, had an obsession to roam the world.

One had a wealthy family, another barely scraped by to fund his travels, another taught English. They were the same as all travelers who want to see the world: some meeting friends along the way, some volunteering, some learning about the world, some teaching language, others teaching composting, most doing anything to make expenses while they tour the world.

I saw myself in their faces; 40 years ago that was me, lured by exotic places and the chance to meet new people, see new flora and fauna, and to try new foods. Travel had been an obsession with me then and still is. Above all else, at the top of my list was adventure.

Once we had our custom stamp, we returned to the boat to sail on. We soon arrived at an idyllic island with a reef where we entered a sheltered cove and anchored in an azure lagoon. We fished and snorkeled on the reefs and then I went ashore to pick coconuts. By the time I returned to the boat, the Kuna Indians had come out in dugout canoes and offered their handmade textiles, fish, fruit, crabs, lobsters, and coco loco, a coconut drink fortified with a shot of rum.

A beautiful Kuna woman was among the men and it seemed that sunrays followed her as she moved. Her eyebrows were busy birds that fluttered with questions, dived with demands, and hovered with approval. With every tilt of her head or twist of her body she directed the men in a concert of impromptu commerce. She was the maestra leading the ensemble with every movement of her expressive body and animated face.

She was lovely and compelling to watch as she spoke to the men with authority one minute and kindness the next. Although theirs was not a matriarchal society as far as I knew, she left no doubt that she controlled the group of men. She invited us ashore for dinner in impeccable English and instructed us to bring the rum.

Dining With The Kuna Queen

By all means when the queen of any island invites you to dinner you put on your finest duds, even if it is a sun-bleached silk shirt and khaki shorts, and you show up on time. Late in the afternoon the captain opened that locked cabinet and out came not guns as I suspected but the rum bottle. We piled into the inflatable and hauled up on shore where the Kuna Queen greeted us and led the way to her-palm frond castle. She bid us sit at a log table as she served us a seafood stew with fish and crab. The bisque would have made the chef for the Queen of England envious.

We stayed late, talking and drinking coco loco well into the night as I fell for this Kuna Queen and her little slice of paradise.

We staggered into the inflatable in the dark of the early morning and then returned to the sailboat. Around noon of the following day we woke to no tourists and no other boats in sight. We went ashore again. No sign of the queen but I had a good look at the Kuna’s palm houses made of woven cane walls and palm branch roofs. These people truly lived for the day, the hour, the minute I realized. If a storm should come and blow the straw hut away, they would just gather more palm and build their house anew.

In the afternoon, Kuna boats gouged out of huge trees came in from the open sea to bring fish and produce for sale. They pulled alongside our sailboat just like sea-born delivery trucks. Each time we met a group of men they would ask us if we had some rice or beans, coffee, or cigarettes. Although the sea provided all their needs, they craved foods common to us but not available to these island dwellers who harvested the sea. Coffee, cigarettes, and beans were exotics to the Kuna.

By now I was warming to this experience of touring the San Blas Archipelago.
Of the 350 or so Islands in the San Blas group only 43 are inhabited by the Kuna; most islands do not have enough water to sustain a settlement. 

We visited several of the larger islands and although my first day had been misery, the $250 that the boat passage to Colombia cost started to look like a bargain. Each afternoon we dropped anchor in a secluded cove to fish and beach comb We sailed among the islands for three days.

Paradise faded in the sunset as we picked up a breeze and headed across open water to Cartagena. With me dreading another siege of seasickness, the winds cooled and pushed us gently away from Eden towards the unknown. Then the winds slackened and the heat rose.

Running Aground 

I could still see the clouds hugging the Khuna archipelago of San Blass as we entered the open ocean and I was relieved to see a glassy surface off into infinity with no storm clouds in sight. Then the wind all but died and we were forced to use the motor. We lugged slowly south as the heat became oppressive.
 Soon I was wishing for the cooling palapas of the Kuna and a repeat dinner with the queen.

I would like to share with you my backpack trip from the USA through 

Central America to South America and south all the way to Ushuaia and

 on to Antarctica.

From there I was back on the Pan American Highway 

and went north all the way to the northern end of 190 at Prudhoe Bay 

     After a swim in an Antarctic volcanic lagoon, a freezing dip

 in the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay, and a stare down of a grizzly bear, 

 what could go wrong.  I had my answer soon enough when I found myself 

stranded in a town called Chicken.

                   

                             Order through Amazon,  Stranded In Chicken