"He gave the impression that very many cities had rubbed him smooth."
Graham Greene
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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
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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.
Amazon Books
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.
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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
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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.
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Stranded In Chicken
