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The Waga's Shoes Come Off: San Blas II

© Colleen Kaleda

Bright and blue, the Caribbean stretched out below our tiny plane. El Porvenir , an island with an airstrip slicing it in half awaited. If we hadn't landed so effortlessly at the dilapidated Carti airport, I might have worried. But the Panamanian pilots had my full faith. We touched down lightly, the softest landing I'd ever experienced. The pilot reversed the prop propellers, slowing us well before the lapping Caribbean met the sand at the end of the airstrip.

At last -- Kuna Yala!

Kuna Yala, or "Land of the Kuna," is a semi-autonomous district where no wagas (foreigner in Kuna language), Panamanian or otherwise, are allowed, except to visit. This has been Kuna territory since 1850, and despite serveral tries by outside forces to take control of it, the Kuna have never given it up.

The island-village of Nalunega is my destination. As I step off the airplane, I'm greeted by Luis Burgos, owner of the Hotel San Blas, the place where I'll be staying for the next three days and nights.

(Somehow, somebody told someone I was coming. How this was communicated I'll never know. The single telephone on Nalunega was broken while I was there.)

Nonetheless, Luis escorts me away from the puddle jumper and into his dugout canoe waiting at the El Porvenir dock. There is just one other guest today, a friendly Londoner named Peter on a day trip from Panama City. Peter had just arrived on another plane. Our dugout has an outboard motor, and our captain Jose, Luis, Peter and I bump lightly over the water past tiny island-villages packed with thatched huts.

We are in literally in another world. We look at one another with wide-eyes as we soak in this place. We share the look of two children who have just found a frog in the woods for the very first time. It's our secret now. Well, at least for the rest of the day.

Hotel San Blas is the cheapest place in the archipelago where non-Kuna can stay. The place is bare-bones; in the United States, it probably wouldn't qualify as a "hotel." Situated right in the village, there are only about 15 rooms, all bamboo walls and thatched roofs. The rooms closest to the village, where I stayed, are the only second-story structure on the island, and offer porch views of the village's thatched huts and the Caribbean beyond. The hotel is not really a hotel by Western standards. The beds are thin mattresses set on too-bouncy springs. There are no real walls. The eight rooms share the same thatched ceiling. The bathrooms are in a separate building by the dining hut. They haven't been cleaned in a long time. Crabs skitter along wet sand when you open the door to the toilet room.

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