20th April
After 2 weeks in the house of Alex, Beate & Louisa we finally re-packed our stuff and went on our way with the bikes, cycling back the 30km into Panama city along the Panama Canal and through the nice rain forests of the surrounding national parks. But to get to the south end of the city, where the road towards the islands of San Blas starts, was clearly going to be a nightmare as we would have to cross the whole city and its suburbs - about 30-40km of heavy traffic and smog. So we jumped on a bus through town and out of it, reaching the little town of Chepo on the road towards the infamous Darien region. The Darien is the border area in between Panama and Colombia where there are literally no roads at all; only rain forest, rivers, some mountains, Columbian FARC rebels, lots of drug smugglers, and no way through except if you are a crazy madman with a big machete who wants to hack his way through the jungle for a few weeks. That's why we planned to get to the caribbean coast and boat or sail through the many islands towards South America.
In Chepo the sky was dark gray and the first rains of the coming rainy season started moments after we had left the bus and packed our many bags on the bikes. As it was still tropically warm though, we decided to start cycling anyway. Indeed the rains were light and dried quickly on our skin while riding. We rode another nice 20km along the Darien highway, before we reached the turnoff for the coast in El Llano. A few hundred meters beyond we already saw the dirt road climbing an incredibly steep hill. We had been warned of this dirt road, of the steepest climbs ever, the mud and dirt, but also the nice forests to cycle through. We s
topped for a lunch break before attacking this nightmare of a road. Fortunately things turned out differently than we expected... a road construction truck stopped next to us while we prepared our sandwiches and offered us a ride to kilometer 21. Once on the truck, we couldn't thank the driver enough for the hellish road he had spared us. Nonetheless, once we got out at km21, we knew that we still had another 20km to go to reach the coast. And it continued with climbs of 15 to 20 to 25%, some mud, often too steep for one of us alone to PUSH the bike up – especially because we were overloaded with extra food and supplies for the islands! So almost every big hill we had to leave one bike at the bottom, push the other one up together, and then walk back down to get the second one. We wondered how single bike travelers had gotten over these climbs! After only 10km and a couple of slides and falls, we were both totally exhausted and ready for bed. We set up camp in a little clearing of the rain forest on the side of the road, and listened to the birds and monkeys. After dinner – which we had to partly cook and eat in the little evening rains – we fell to “bed” at 9pm. We (Kat) didn't want to get our newly washed bedding and clothes dirty so we just slept on our air mats; it being so warm and humid we didn't need any covers.
21st April
During the night a lot of rain kept falling. We really must have been exhausted, as we slept till past 8am, more than 11 hours of sleep! While it was still drizzling when we woke, the rain finally stopped and some sun showed during breakfast. Back on the bikes, the same ordeal as yesterday evening continued: too steep hills, too much slippery mud to be able to push bikes up the too steep hills alone. Average speed stayed at yesterdays 4-5km/hour. But again, we got lucky. After only(!) 3km a nearly empty pick-up truck – a rarity here as all the others we had seen were loaded to the roof – stopped for us when passing. It was two of the engineers that are currently supervising the very needed road improvements. And best of all, they went all the way to its end on the coast! After riding with them the last 7 km through a river, over some more horrible hills and steep muddy descents, we got off at the Carti airstrip with blue caribbean water slapping onto the beach next to it. We had made it, we had arrived at the San Blas islands, they were in view all over the horizon!
Minutes later we were sitting in a little boat with 15 other people, being shipped to Carti ….. It seems the effects of the sun are stronger here: we realized a little too late that we hadn't used sunscreen and were burned even though it was cloudy and overcast and had even rained. So we put some on our tender arms and faces and enjoyed the ride. The San Blas Islands consist of about 400 islets (the locals like to say there is an island for every day of the year, but there are actually a few more than that) that stretch all along the coast from a bit south of the Caribbean exit of the Panama Canal to nearly the border with Colombia. They are inhabited by the Kuna, an indigenous group who run the islands and a strip of coast along them as an autonomous region with minimal interference from the national government. We learned from our guide book that “after a violent uprising in 1925 they were granted permission to implement their own system of governance and economy while still maintaining their language, representation in the Panamanian legislature and full voting rights. They have today one of the greatest degrees of autonomy of any indigenous group in Latin America, and preserve their traditional way of life with great efforts,” as we were going to witness in the days to come.
Carti consists of 4 little islands set closely together. We got off at the biggest of them, Carti Suitupo, where the school, the main shop and the main pier are. Homes of the Kuna, made of bamboo walls and banana leaf thatched roofs, crowd Carti up to over the very edge of the island. The alleys between houses are so narrow that two people can barely pass each other. It is probably one of the most densly populated islands in the world; the Kuna chose to only inhabit 37 of the ~400 islands, which reflects their strong sense of community living (but also some of the islands leave no choice as they are too small for more than one house to be on them!). Of course this overcrowding brings some problems as well: there is no room to put the trash and so most of it – at least in Carti - just ends up in the water; the littered sea floor helped us resist the temptation of a dip into the water to escape the humid heat and wash off the dirt and sweat from the last two days in the jungle. Latrines all around over the water's edge were an even stronger reason to stay dirty a bit longer.
Luckily some of the passengers of the boat we came in on planned to travel onwards towards Corazon de Jesus (Heart of Jesus), a group of islands a 2 hour boat ride east, towards Colombia, so we joined them in the little “panga”, as the small long boats are called here, for the nice ride through the Caribbean. We passed many little islets, some just big enough for a house, others about the size of a football field. The islands were mostly only populated by a few coconut palms, coconuts being the main export of the Kuna. As Panama, ironically, doesn't have a coconut processing plant but Colombia has several, Colombian boats travel along the islands to buy coconuts from the Kuna, delivering all sorts of necessities and food in exchange. Corazon de Jesus turned out to be nearly as crowded as Carti, but we read in our guidebook many positive remarks about Isla Tigre, a few kilometers further east, so we arranged to get on another boat to get there.
And indeed Isla Tigre is the little paradise that we are all dreaming of when seeing postcards of carribean beaches: a non-crowded very pleasant village, that has preserved their traditions even more than most other islands of the archipelago, which are slowly succumbing to western habits and influences. Isla Tigre is home of extra friendly inhabitants who invited us over the days we spent there to witness a few of their ceremonies, dances and traditions, and were extremely willing to explain to us their culture, their communal way of living, their organizational structures, as well as their struggles and problems to survive in a modernizing world – including the problems of rubbish disposal, income, and preserving their traditions in the age of mobile phones and satellite TV. Kat was even invited to attend an upcoming birth by the local nurse - he informed us there are sadly no midwives here; unfortunately we left before the woman went into labor.
After 2 weeks in the house of Alex, Beate & Louisa we finally re-packed our stuff and went on our way with the bikes, cycling back the 30km into Panama city along the Panama Canal and through the nice rain forests of the surrounding national parks. But to get to the south end of the city, where the road towards the islands of San Blas starts, was clearly going to be a nightmare as we would have to cross the whole city and its suburbs - about 30-40km of heavy traffic and smog. So we jumped on a bus through town and out of it, reaching the little town of Chepo on the road towards the infamous Darien region. The Darien is the border area in between Panama and Colombia where there are literally no roads at all; only rain forest, rivers, some mountains, Columbian FARC rebels, lots of drug smugglers, and no way through except if you are a crazy madman with a big machete who wants to hack his way through the jungle for a few weeks. That's why we planned to get to the caribbean coast and boat or sail through the many islands towards South America.
In Chepo the sky was dark gray and the first rains of the coming rainy season started moments after we had left the bus and packed our many bags on the bikes. As it was still tropically warm though, we decided to start cycling anyway. Indeed the rains were light and dried quickly on our skin while riding. We rode another nice 20km along the Darien highway, before we reached the turnoff for the coast in El Llano. A few hundred meters beyond we already saw the dirt road climbing an incredibly steep hill. We had been warned of this dirt road, of the steepest climbs ever, the mud and dirt, but also the nice forests to cycle through. We s
topped for a lunch break before attacking this nightmare of a road. Fortunately things turned out differently than we expected... a road construction truck stopped next to us while we prepared our sandwiches and offered us a ride to kilometer 21. Once on the truck, we couldn't thank the driver enough for the hellish road he had spared us. Nonetheless, once we got out at km21, we knew that we still had another 20km to go to reach the coast. And it continued with climbs of 15 to 20 to 25%, some mud, often too steep for one of us alone to PUSH the bike up – especially because we were overloaded with extra food and supplies for the islands! So almost every big hill we had to leave one bike at the bottom, push the other one up together, and then walk back down to get the second one. We wondered how single bike travelers had gotten over these climbs! After only 10km and a couple of slides and falls, we were both totally exhausted and ready for bed. We set up camp in a little clearing of the rain forest on the side of the road, and listened to the birds and monkeys. After dinner – which we had to partly cook and eat in the little evening rains – we fell to “bed” at 9pm. We (Kat) didn't want to get our newly washed bedding and clothes dirty so we just slept on our air mats; it being so warm and humid we didn't need any covers.21st April
During the night a lot of rain kept falling. We really must have been exhausted, as we slept till past 8am, more than 11 hours of sleep! While it was still drizzling when we woke, the rain finally stopped and some sun showed during breakfast. Back on the bikes, the same ordeal as yesterday evening continued: too steep hills, too much slippery mud to be able to push bikes up the too steep hills alone. Average speed stayed at yesterdays 4-5km/hour. But again, we got lucky. After only(!) 3km a nearly empty pick-up truck – a rarity here as all the others we had seen were loaded to the roof – stopped for us when passing. It was two of the engineers that are currently supervising the very needed road improvements. And best of all, they went all the way to its end on the coast! After riding with them the last 7 km through a river, over some more horrible hills and steep muddy descents, we got off at the Carti airstrip with blue caribbean water slapping onto the beach next to it. We had made it, we had arrived at the San Blas islands, they were in view all over the horizon!
Minutes later we were sitting in a little boat with 15 other people, being shipped to Carti ….. It seems the effects of the sun are stronger here: we realized a little too late that we hadn't used sunscreen and were burned even though it was cloudy and overcast and had even rained. So we put some on our tender arms and faces and enjoyed the ride. The San Blas Islands consist of about 400 islets (the locals like to say there is an island for every day of the year, but there are actually a few more than that) that stretch all along the coast from a bit south of the Caribbean exit of the Panama Canal to nearly the border with Colombia. They are inhabited by the Kuna, an indigenous group who run the islands and a strip of coast along them as an autonomous region with minimal interference from the national government. We learned from our guide book that “after a violent uprising in 1925 they were granted permission to implement their own system of governance and economy while still maintaining their language, representation in the Panamanian legislature and full voting rights. They have today one of the greatest degrees of autonomy of any indigenous group in Latin America, and preserve their traditional way of life with great efforts,” as we were going to witness in the days to come.
Carti consists of 4 little islands set closely together. We got off at the biggest of them, Carti Suitupo, where the school, the main shop and the main pier are. Homes of the Kuna, made of bamboo walls and banana leaf thatched roofs, crowd Carti up to over the very edge of the island. The alleys between houses are so narrow that two people can barely pass each other. It is probably one of the most densly populated islands in the world; the Kuna chose to only inhabit 37 of the ~400 islands, which reflects their strong sense of community living (but also some of the islands leave no choice as they are too small for more than one house to be on them!). Of course this overcrowding brings some problems as well: there is no room to put the trash and so most of it – at least in Carti - just ends up in the water; the littered sea floor helped us resist the temptation of a dip into the water to escape the humid heat and wash off the dirt and sweat from the last two days in the jungle. Latrines all around over the water's edge were an even stronger reason to stay dirty a bit longer.Luckily some of the passengers of the boat we came in on planned to travel onwards towards Corazon de Jesus (Heart of Jesus), a group of islands a 2 hour boat ride east, towards Colombia, so we joined them in the little “panga”, as the small long boats are called here, for the nice ride through the Caribbean. We passed many little islets, some just big enough for a house, others about the size of a football field. The islands were mostly only populated by a few coconut palms, coconuts being the main export of the Kuna. As Panama, ironically, doesn't have a coconut processing plant but Colombia has several, Colombian boats travel along the islands to buy coconuts from the Kuna, delivering all sorts of necessities and food in exchange. Corazon de Jesus turned out to be nearly as crowded as Carti, but we read in our guidebook many positive remarks about Isla Tigre, a few kilometers further east, so we arranged to get on another boat to get there.
And indeed Isla Tigre is the little paradise that we are all dreaming of when seeing postcards of carribean beaches: a non-crowded very pleasant village, that has preserved their traditions even more than most other islands of the archipelago, which are slowly succumbing to western habits and influences. Isla Tigre is home of extra friendly inhabitants who invited us over the days we spent there to witness a few of their ceremonies, dances and traditions, and were extremely willing to explain to us their culture, their communal way of living, their organizational structures, as well as their struggles and problems to survive in a modernizing world – including the problems of rubbish disposal, income, and preserving their traditions in the age of mobile phones and satellite TV. Kat was even invited to attend an upcoming birth by the local nurse - he informed us there are sadly no midwives here; unfortunately we left before the woman went into labor.
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