San Blas Islands, Panama: A haven for ancient ways

On the sun-drenched mornings in Playon Chico, Panama, the graveyard is the liveliest place in town. Playon Chico's inhabitants, the Kuna Indians, still hold to their ancient beliefs that each person has a good and a bad spirit, and that after death the good spirit needs help to get to heaven. So every morning, the Kuna women march up the slippery jungle slope to the hilltop graveyard to keep their deceased relatives company and provide a little celestial boost.

On a morning in September, an elderly man named Carlos Owens had recently died, and the women of his family lounged in hammocks they had slung between the poles that supported his grave's thatched roof. The shelters filled with smoke from the pots of incense that the older women had placed on the grave. The younger women chatted and worked on molas — layered lengths of fabric intricately cut and sewn into various colors and designs. Their calves were wrapped in loops of beads, bright yellows and reds against their tanned skin, but it was their midsections that drew the eye, wrapped in molas that are part of their blouses. The family fortune adorned the older women's noses and ears in the form of thick gold loops.

A few people like the Kuna still exist in the world — groups who have stuck to many of their ancient ways despite all the pressures of modernity. To see most of them means traveling to remote and sometimes unsafe corners of the world like the mountains of Burma or the Congolese jungle. The home of the Kuna, however, is beautiful and tranquil: they occupy the San Blas Islands on Panama's Caribbean coast. To get back to my comfortable hotel on a private island, part of the archipelago, I had only to walk down the hill from the graveyard, hop in a boat and ride 15 minutes.

The San Blas Islands, or Kuna Yala Reserve, as they are also known, are a rare confluence of two types of paradise: tropical and cultural. They are one of the few vacation spots that an anthropologist and a beach bum can agree on. But while San Blas has flown under the tourism radar for years, it may not stay that way for long.

I was there first in 1984 with my parents and older sister. Back then, San Blas had no tourism infrastructure to speak of. Access was by six-person planes from Panama City. On that trip we stayed in a village on a small island where nobody spoke Spanish, much less English. The people wore their traditional dress almost exclusively and supported themselves by fishing and gathering fruit.

We meant to make an overnight trip, but wound up staying four days, snorkeling, eating shellfish and chicken, and watching the lobsters walk across the island every afternoon. The islands had no electricity, and for the most part, we were the entertainment; the locals had seen so few tourists as to remain curious. My parents fell in love with the molas, and for a pittance bought more than they could ever use. My father described our days there as "a sigh of relief."

Last year, our family decided to go back. When an Internet search turned up a variety of hotel choices in the region and not one but two airlines offering daily flights from Panama City, we thought at first that the unspoiled days of San Blas must be over. But that surmise turned out to be wrong. A 15-seat puddle jumper took us to Playon Chico, a coastal village, and none of the other passengers were tourists. There, we were met by our guide, Alicio Istocel, a short, broad man with an honest face and a T-shirt with the logo of the hotel. He is Kuna, but speaks Spanish.

Istocel informed us that we were the lone guests at our hotel, Sapibenega the Kuna Lodge, which claimed fame in a brief television appearance as a reward vacation for cast members on the television series "Survivor." The hotel is on a small island devoted exclusively to it. Its four cabanas sit on stilts in the water, bamboo-walled oases of luxury with large beds, mosquito nets and hammocks on the porch for lounging and drinking in the ocean view.

The islands of the Kuna Yala are ringed with coral reefs and are themselves made of coral, with topsoil that is shallow and low on nutrients. A small, stubbly grass covered the grounds, interrupted every so often by palm trees and protruding chunks of brain coral, looking like a tropical miniature golf course.

When we were ready for diversion, Istocel took us in a motor-powered dugout canoe to a small nearby island and dropped us off there for a leisurely afternoon. We snorkeled the nearby reefs, paddling languidly through an underwater garden that seemed to specialize in the pointy: staghorn corals, forbidding black sea urchins and the slightly friendlier starfish.

The only other people we saw were a local fisherman taking his nephews to the beach for a swim. The fisherman spoke no Spanish, but as a friendly gesture he found a ripe coconut on the ground and cut a hole in it with his machete. I sipped the sweet milk and then offered it to his three nephews, who were all under 6 and chasing each other around the beach naked. They mistook my meaning, however, and turned the coconut into a ball for a game of monkey-in-the-middle.

When the boat returned, my father refused to get in. "Why would I want to leave?" he said, pouting.

That set the pattern for our visit. Between breakfasts of fresh pineapple and eggs, lunches of fish caught after breakfast and served on the bone, and dinners of tender octopus and langoustine, Istocel would drop us off at one of the hundreds of uninhabited islands in the area with our snorkeling equipment. The islands varied between a scrubby bump no more than 10 feet across (our request) to a beach inside a maze of inlets and palm-overhung coves.

As for the Kuna, they still travel between the islands in their hand-carved canoes powered by outboard motors, gather fruit, and stitch molas. Although a few buildings are made of concrete, the majority are still bamboo and thatch. After walking around Playon Chico for an hour, we had 10 little kids trailing after us, holding our hands and, remarkably, not asking for pens or money.

Paradise can, of course, be quickly lost. A cautionary tale is El Porvenir, the capital of the Kuna Yala, which has been drawing tourists for over 70 years, Istocel said, with occasional stops from large cruise ships. Its population has become dependent on tourists for their livelihood.

"The people no work more in the jungle," an artisan in Playon Chico, Juan Alfaro, said in his limited English — the only English I heard in the town. "No grow plantains, yucca, corn. Only await the tourists."

The Kuna Yala communities — a semi-autonomous region of Panama — are ruled by sahilas, regional chiefs who serve four-year terms and set the laws. Albertino Illeta, the chief of Playon Chico, is a leather-faced man who walks the town's packed dirt streets wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a mola-patterned tie, his official uniform.

On the issue of tourism, Illeta and the other sahilas try to strike a balance between benefiting and becoming dependent. Tourists in the archipelago are required to pay one dollar for each interaction with a Kuna (Panama uses American currency) including photos and conversations.

"The community wants more tourists," Illeta told me, with Istocel translating into Spanish. "For the economy. And maybe the culture won't be lost."

But surely, the aim was not to be like El Porvenir, I asked.

"More like El Porvenir," he said. "Yes." Then he asked me for a buck.

Playon Chico starts to wake up around midafternoon. Most islands in San Blas are in sight of the mainland, but Playon Chico is even closer. The children return from school, a quick trip across the footbridge that connects the island to Panama proper. They change from their uniforms into street clothes or sometimes no clothes at all. Playon Chico is a Pied Piper's dream, 80 percent children because young adults generally seek their fortune on the mainland, many never to return.

The town strains against its sea boundary, the outer ring of houses ending well beyond the water's edge, listing on their stilts. Children run and play in the street, some practicing traditional dances, hopping from one foot to the other to the music of pan pipes and maracas, while others fly makeshift kites constructed of garbage bags, twigs and unspooled cassette tape.

Down Main Street, Alfaro was tending a store where hundreds of molas made by his wife and sister-in-law were sewn together and hung like iridescent quilts out to dry. As the light slowly faded, he leaned against his house, staring at the pinking sky. He is Kuna, but was born in Panama City. He moved to Playon Chico only two years ago.

"It's very peace, it's friendly, the air is pure," he said. He sighed, and added: "Tourism will grow. How do you tell them no? How can you? It is money."

ISLANDS OF PANAMA THAT TIME FORGOT

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

La Estancia is an affordable and pleasant bed-and-breakfast close to the domestic airport (doubles from $55; www.bedandbreakfastpanama.com).

Manolo Caracol in the Old Town serves sinfully good family-style seafood tapas for $20 a person, making the layover worthwhile (Avenida Central y Calle Tercera Casco Antiguo; 011-507-228-4640; www.manolocaracol.net; reservations recommended).

Sapibenega the Kuna Lodge offers a three-day package typical of the region, with accommodation, guided tour and meals included, on a private island, beginning at about $400 a person, double occupancy. The hotel (011-507-215-1406; www.sapibenega.com) is Kuna-owned and staffed, and the employees are very friendly and helpful but do not speak English. The hotel will take you most places you want to go in dugout canoes with outboard motors, but if you want to do something out of the ordinary, it will charge extra.

For a more mobile look at the archipelago, Panama Luxury Vacations offers vacations that involve a week of sailing in the Kuna Yala. The package is all inclusive with accommodation aboard a sailboat, and also has kayaking and fishing in addition to snorkeling and visiting with the Kuna Indians. It is more upscale but involves less contact with the Kuna (about $3,500 a person with a minimum party of four; 800-606-1860; www.vacationscostarica.com/panama).

Two to four days should be sufficient time in the San Blas Islands, depending on your tolerance for pristine beaches, fresh seafood and little else. Your hotel will act as full-service guide and transportation, and because of the isolated nature of the communities, little spontaneity is possible. If you do not speak Spanish, take a phrase book.

WHAT TO BUY

The Kuna Indians are famous for their molas, placemat-size cloths that can be used in a variety of decorative ways. When purchasing molas, you should haggle and pay no more than $20. Pay less for molas made from two cloths and more for those made from three or four. The geometrical patterns are traditional, while those with animals and people are solely for tourists.

(πηγή: www.iht.com, 10/1/2008)