Introduction

San Blas islands are a tropical paradise where the time seems to be stopped many years ago. A sailing boat is the best (maybe the only) way to live and explore this still-incontaminated world because the mass-tourism business is not yet organised and you don't find many facilities.

Imagine 350-400 islands, surrounded and protected by coral reefs, with coconut palms, white beeches and crystal clear water - that is the tropical paradise of San Blas. Perfect for the sort of vacations that most people dream about.

So we encourage you to organize your vacation with us.

Our boat - If you want you to have an unforgettable cruise at San Blas, like in any other part of the world's oceans, sure you don't need just a sailing boat but a safe sailing boat! This is the first important thing we can insure and an important advise we want give to you.

 

We are on a charming boat builded to navigate (even if it would be better to say “born” to navigate!). It is a Sciarrelli project, a steel classic boat builded in Italy, in Venezia, in 1983. This is one of the 8 model who was ever builded, off course it is not a mass-production!

 

This sailing boat has a long background of navigation: one circumnavigation of the world and one circumnavigation of Africa.

 

San Blas - tropical Paradise - It is all very pristine, and that is thanks to the other great feature of San Blas - the Kuna Indians and their very special culture.          

When the Spanish conquistadores came to South America the Kunas lived in the highlands of what now is Colombia. They had plenty of gold - and covered their chiefs, the sailas, with gold powder when they were elected - so the Spaniards haunted them ruthlessly. Gradually, all the time fighting, also with other Indian tribes, the Kunas moved to the Isthmus of Panama.

They survived as a nation thanks to their strong democratic political system, which made it possible for them to make alliances, with the British, with the Dutch and with the pirates. When Henry Morgan destroyed Panama City in 1671 he was helped across the isthmus by the Kunas.

 

Manmade coconut islands - In the nineteenth century they moved out from the mainland to the islands of San Blas and made coconut plantations of what before was islands covered by mangrove. So don't pick coconuts, they all have an owner and still is the base, much more than tourists, of the Kuna economy. Most of the crop is exported to Colombia.

The Kunas know much more about us than we do about them. Many of them have years of experience of working and living in the industrialized world. They accept innovations, technical, cultural and religious - but only if they can be combined with their culture and traditions.

History alive - The result is that they on the whole are living like Indians were living before the Spaniards landed. Some of them have outboard engines but most of them sail or paddle their dug out canoes.
Many of them have cell phones, but they still speak the Kuna language, Tule, in them.
Most of them, if you ask, say they are Christians of some kind. In Kuna villages there are hundreds of more or less primitive, mostly very small, churches from all kinds of Christian sects, but very few people in each one of them.
All of them, the whole village, are there when they have their Kuna religious fiestas - usually for four days.

Matriarchate - The Kuna women are very important and very strong; this is a matriarchate. Heritage goes on the female side, and a man who marries moves to the home of the girl. The owner of a house or an island usually is an old woman. The mola, that is part of the traditional female dress and a good souvenir, is an important part of the culture.

The Kuna culture, especially their religion and their political system, is like a window where you can look back to hundreds of years of South American history. The religious philosophy of the Kunas is very much the same as the ideas and ideals of modern, radical environmental movements. God is Mother Earth, and everything alive has got a spirit and a value.

The revolution - That has always been governing the Kuna's economical and political relations with other governments. When Panama got independent in 1903, the new republic made huge plans for San Blas - harbours, forestry, mining, hotels. To protect Mother Earth the Kunas opposed everything.

Panama answered by oppressing the Kunas, making almost everything in their culture forbidden and using Kunas as slave labour. The Kunas resisted as much as they could. "They had fire arms and we only had bows and arrows, but we poisoned their food", says the verbal Kuna tradition.

At last, in 1925, there was an uprising, a bloody but swift revolution against the Panamanian government, which, after some pressure from USA, the new ally of the Kunas, was forced to surrender and give what now is the republic of Kuna Yala it's unique independence.

The Indians that won the war - One can say that the Kunas are the only Indians that won the war with the white man. But the they are still fighting, now against settlers who build small farms, harvest in the rain forests or dig for gold on the Kuna Yala mainland. They are fighting Panamanian and Colombian plans for large scale infrastructural projects. They hardly accept any economical activity run by other than Kunas.

That's why Kuna Yala, only 50 miles from a big, modern city, still is such an isolated part of the World. Half an hour by air or 3-4 hours by a jeep, and you find the Paradise of Kuna Yala. Still most people have never heard about it.

That is because commercial interests from industrialised countries have no interest in marketing Kuna Yala. As long as the Kunas stick to their basic idea, that the land is holy and can not be sold, given away or destroyed, it will stay that way. And that´s how long the Kuna Culture will survive.