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Carti Islands, Panama
9° 28' N 78° 57' W
Nov 02, 2007 20:22
Distance 85km

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Paradise in Patches

Text written in: English

Hey There,

So I'm just back from 3 days on the San Blas islands in the Caribbean. A tropical paradise with desert islands that have white breaches, turquoise sea & covered in palm trees, but it wasn't all paradise unfortunately.

I left in our taxi at 530am from Panama City. I was the last person in the taxi. There were two Swiss German girls and a couple of locals, including a young eight year old girl holding a monkey the same size as herself, heading back to the islands. The first hour was on smooth roads, and then we changed cars into a four wheel drive vehicle for the last hour and a half. Then it was about 30 minutes on a boat to Carti, the main island community in San Blas.

The island wasn’t really what I was expecting. The island was about the size of two soccer pitches with a population of about 700. Houses were jam paced onto the island and the waters edge had an out house every 40 meters. The outhouses were houses over the water, where all the contents of your bowels went straight into the sea. Not an ideal spot for a swim.

Bowels: I haven’t mentioned bowels in some time. I have thought about my bowels a bit in the last few days. This time it’s a bit different: Bowels can do things you wouldn’t expect. Some how ones bowels seem to know when one is in a slightly dodgy location. I don’t know how they do this. I arrived on the islands Tuesday morning early and it was Friday morning before my seal broke, despite the fact that I was eating plenty When I go to a 5 start hotel my bowels don’t block up. It’s the simple things that make me happy.

My bed was a hammock which is normally not a bad place to sleep: it does take me a night or so to get used to sleeping in one though. On the first night i was sleeping in a house towards the middle of island. i needed to go for a pee. I didn't really want to walk to waters edge in middle of night. Thankfully I found an empty bottle that I could use. I changed houses the next day to one nearer the waters edge. As I was laying in my hammock reading before going to sleep. I heard a noise from the roof. It was nothing other than a big grey hairy rat. Took me a little longer to get to sleep that night. I eventually hummed myself to sleep to the tune of "There's a rat in my roof what am I going to do!" No doubt I dreamt of rats parachuting on to my hammocks that night. Mr. Rat came back for a visit on the 3rd night too. 

The San Blas islands are an 'autonomous' area of Panama. They have a degree of self rule, but not really sure how much. They had a revolution back in the in 1929, and got autonomous rule of sorts. The Kunas, indigenous people from San Blas, were getting their hands and noses cuts off because they were adorned with gold. Eventually there was an armed struggle with the Panamanian forces and they were given autonomy.

While I was there a Panamanian gun boat arrived in the islands with lots of police. San Blas islands is a natural reserve, the locals can fish etc for their communities needs. But they are not allowed to sell it to businesses outside the area. The police had heard that the islanders were selling stuff illegally and they found two giants freezers stuffed with shrimp, lobster and other fish. The gun boats left saying that they would return in 15 days expecting a 5,000 USD fine, or else they would seize the entire contents of the freezers.

The people on Carti island were very friendly. Whenever I saw the 8 year old monkey girl from the taxi, she would run over and hug me like we were best friends forever. Given that I've been traveling for 7 months now meeting new people and saying goodbye a few days later. It was nice to be best friend forever.

The first day we were whisked off to perfect desert islands where we could hang out, swim, snorkel and relax. There were already 14 people staying in Hostal Carti. But we had the island to ourselves. On the way back in the boat, it started raining and got a bit chilly. The 17 of us in the ‘hostal’ were spread out around the island. I was sharing with a two hammock room with an Israeli guy. The food that night was really bad. But thankfully it got a little bit better as the days went by. Thankfully I had brought plenty of snacks.

On the second day there were just three of us. We spent the day on dawg island, and made a trip near pelican island and one tree island. More fantastic spectacular tropical islands. Again it got a bit chilly in the rain on the way back, but this time I was ready for it.

On my third day in the islands I was by myself. They plan was to go sailing around, unfortunately for whatever reason we only spent an hour and a half off the main island. And the rest of the day spent hanging around doing more or less nothing. Unfortunately it’s not the nicest place in the world to do nothing. I did take a visit to the local museum. Well worth it and interesting, but did spend most of the day reading in a hammock in my room.

On morning of the fourth day I evacuated my bowels and headed back to Panama City. When I got back to the hostel I had stayed in for about 11 nights previously, mamallena backpackers hostel, the owner told me that there were no beds despite my having a reservation. I was told that reservations made by internet were put at the top of the list, because if they weren’t happy they would complain on the internet. I told him that I could complain on the internet too. The owner laughed when I said this. He did offer me a bed in a different hostel he had just opened.

That’s all for now,

Take Care,

Steve.