Achutupu, San Blas, Panama

We anchored yesterday off the Kuna town of Achutupu, only about 4 miles south of Islandia. It took us 3 tries to get anchored. The water is either 40 feet deep or 4 feet deep, and we had trouble finding a spot in between that the anchor would hold well. As we get farther south and east, the bottom is less sandy and more muddy (the islands are closer in shore and there are many rivers nearby). We finally found a sand and grass mound that was about 8 feet and got the anchor well set.

Soon after anchoring, 3 boat loads of small children paddled up in ulu's (heavy wooden dugout canoes with wooden paddles). They wanted to know if we wanted molas (No gracias, yo ya tengo muchas molas). I chatted with them for a few minutes in Spanish. My 'small talk' skills are not very good even in English, and it's much more difficult with the language barrier. I can hold long conversations in my head when no one is around, but when I'm sitting there trying to think of something to say, I can't
remember a single word of Spanish. But I did learn that their mother was in the town and their father worked in Panama City. We exchanged names, but most of their names are nearly unpronounceable and I have trouble remembering 'Jane' 5 minutes later.

The porthole for our galley is right at eye-level for a person in an ulu, so they all got a kick out of looking in the window, giggling, pointing, and talking to each other in Kuna.

Finally, they asked if I had any sweets. Fortunately we keep a small jar for just this kind of situation. I gave them each a sugar free chocolate candy, and told them not to tell the other kids in town.

We also had 2-3 ulus come by trying to sell us lobster. Dave is getting pretty irritated that none of them know (or care) that it is closed season. He's given up trying to explain in his broken Spanish the complicated concept of conservation and why it is important that they follow the rules laid down by the Kuna Congreso. But we won't buy any. Especially the small ones, and they are almost always small these days. A cruising friend of ours confessed to buying lobster if they were still alive,
and 'liberating' them.

We found the '4-star Kuna Resort' described in the cruising guide (The Dolphin Lodge) and made reservations for dinner. At dinnertime, there were 10 guests of the hotel, in addition to us. We met a nice young Portugese woman who is staying at the lodge for 3 months as an internship for her degree in tourism (the teacher musta really LOVED her to exile her to Achutupu for 3 months!). She is not getting paid, but gets free room and board. She is the only one at the resort who speaks English, so
she was playing hostess at dinner. The guests were a couple of Germans, an American couple who said they were 'birders', and 3 youngish women who were European.

We had a nice dinner (though expensive for Panama)... it was complete with dessert and coffee/tea for $15pp. They offered lobster, crab, or fresh water lobster. I had the fresh water lobster, which were very much like crayfish but a little bigger than the normal crayfish size.

After dinner we were treated to a little bit of Kuna native dance, with 4 men and 4 women. The women (as is normal) were dressed in traditional dress, with a light wraparound skirt, a sash, a mola blouse, and a scarf on the head. The men were in baggy western-style shorts and shirtless. It was interesting, but somewhat amateurish. And narrated by a Portugese girl who didn't understand the dance, in poor English. But we enjoyed the whole thing.

Returning to the boat, we ended up having a little night from hell... no-see-ums, no wind, and a slight roll. We had left the boat closed up when we went in for dinner--both because of possible rain and possible intruders. So it was hot inside to begin with. It was almost too hot to sleep, and too buggy to go sleep in the cockpit. Fortunately we have good fans over the bed, and after lighting up a mosquito coil and spraying the screens with bug spray, and rolling up in our sheets, we were able
to get to sleep.

We were amazed to find here not one, but two airstrips. The two small airstrips are only about a mile apart, and each equipped with a building and a wind sock. When we asked why they had two airports, they told us that one was for the village of Achutupu and the other for Mamitupu, the village just to the south of Achutupu. Apparently the chiefs do not want the inhabitants of the two small towns to mix...maybe years ago there was bad blood between the villages, though it's hard to imagine the
sweet and quiet Kuna ever making war on anyone.