Wet dreams in paradise…
Travel Location: Central-America-Caribbean,Panama
One of the to do things on my list and of many others is going to San Blas islands in the Caribbean. There are almost 400 islands and not even half have people on it. Besides this some islands just exist from literally one house or 3 palm trees. Sounds great doesn’t it…let me tell you: it is!! San Blas is an area where Kuna people live, they have their own language, lack of social skills and they seem to have also their own development ‘disorder’ They’re really small and their upper body is longer then their legs. Besides this they have a little too much interaction between one and an other: you see a lot of split pallets and albino’s .
I stayed on a little island where maybe 30 people live and there are some bamboo huts where we would sleep in. The arrival day was nice and sunny at first, but started to get nasty in the evening. It was a bit stormy when we went to bed, at 12 a real storm started and at 3 rain woke me up…The rain was pissing down and almost horizontal, so it came big time through the bamboo-hut-wall-part. I tried to put the mattress side ways as a rain shield, this was no success as the rain still found it’s way to me over the mattress. In the end it rapped myself around a palm tree in our hut and tried to sleep in the sand, but my sheets were already to wet so it became a long long night. The next day we stared at the rain for hours, here goes my paradise stay, I thought. But at late afternoon we could do a snorkel trip, after a discussion with the owner. All about not telling us a thing and then being upset we didn’t ask the right person for trips and/or information. The snorkel trip didn’t work out to great, but still on our way back we had a really nice sunset. Oh I didn’t mention yet, the food was really basic and they used things which are actually living there, so that means fish and lobster!!! wtf?!?!. Anyho, the last day we had blue blue skies and a really nice snorkel trip to a sunken ship in front of Isla de Perro. Beautiful I must say, again tiny islands with just one or 2 palm trees, white sandy beaches, heaps of colourful fish, sunny, cool sunset..The smile on my face lasted for a while. Later that day we also visited ‘ the capital’ of the Kuna’s. We weren’t allowed to take pics which was a shame, but it was kinda interesting because they do really have their own culture..
Panama city is the city where I stayed before and after going to San Blas for a few nights. The city is actually okay, only wherever you look you see the huge influence the States have on this country: high buildings, shopping malls.. I didn’t do much in the city and I skipped the Panama canal. It is a big thing but also a boy thing. I just didn’t want to put any effort in it to try and go see it. We have canals, dikes and locks.. I stayed in a nice hostel, strolled around the old part of the city. Here I got pulled over by the police. They told me to take an immediate right as I was walking in the ‘wrong’ street. Yes officer! The thing about the old part is that it was still a few years ago a place where you could rent a room by the hour. Now tourism got bigger in Panama it got better but tourism brings also along that there are more people to rob;)
Santa Catalina was my next stop on my list. This because of Isla Coiba and diving with hammerheads. Now it turned out to be that the hammerheads are way to deep so you have to be a technical diver, and Isla Coiba they call it the 2nd Galapagos, but I can name 4 other islands they gave the exact same name. This resulted in no diving, because it’s really expensive and not offering me the thing I wanted. And Isla Coiba more or less the same story…This doesn’t mean it is not a nice spot. We had rain, I wasn’t feeling to great(one night my back pain made me cry), and there was a bed issue for that I had to sleep one night on top of a surf board cover.. It was great anyways, did some snorkeling in the rain (got stung like hell by jelly fish), tried to surf in the rain, we bought some goodies from the one and only store and we saw a save-the-raccoon-from-the-dogs-show;) Just the whole laid back atmosphere, the few sun rays and nice peeps made it a good place to be!!
