To break up our time in Panama City, we traveled to the San Blás archipelago. We took a car service to El Povnir and then took a small boat to get there. Here’s a map of Panama with the destination, when we crossed from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean in 3 hours by car. The island is just off the coast.
San Blas is made up of 300 to 400 islands in the Caribbean sea. Although our trip was not successful, some of the islands were beautiful. Imagine a deserted island, with ample shade trees and plentiful beaches. Now imagine 20 islands all within a quarter mile of one another, this is San Blás.
A few islands of San Blas
Our trip didn’t work because the weather didn’t cooperate with us & where we stayed wasn’t good. The first day there a huge storm blew in; picture a scene from the Perfect Storm, ominous clouds rolling in with the occasional lightning strike off in the distance and a small group of tourists in a tiny little boat. The storm blew over and we got some descent sun that day, but clouds showed up again the next day. Island life & clouds are not a good combo.
Ominous Clouds
The worst thing about this trip was the place we stayed; to get a more “local” experience we decided to stay on the island where the largest number of indigenous people lived, close to 1000 people. Suffice to say, I don’t want to live how they live. We both felt this was the most unsanitary conditions we had experienced the entire trip.
Although there was running water, there was no sink. I couldn’t find soap for a long time & even when I did find some, it wasn’t particularly close to where they cooked.
All of this I could have dealt with but, where & how they went to the bathroom was too disturbing & really wanted to leave after experiencing it.
Typical outhouse over the ocean
The island is encompassed by quite a few outhouses. Literally, your boat takes you to the island and the first thing you see is an outhouse. The bathroom is essentially a toilet seat placed in such a way that one would piss & shit directly into the ocean. There was no running water to wash your hands & there was, here’s the kicker, there was no toilet paper.
The fact that these people fish for their meals not one km away from where this island is located is a bit disturbing.
The whole thing just made me uncomfortable; praise mother earth for the clouds because we cut our trip short by one day.
I’m sure we could have had a better experience if we had chosen a different place to stay.
A better place to stay
If you care to see some more pics of San Blas, click here.
Next up, Panama city!