The San Blas Islands are an archipelago of palm-tree packed islands with aqua blue water and a distinctly Caribbean feel, and they lie between the east coast of Panama and the north coast of Colombia. For us, the San Blas also represented the stepping stones on our journey from Central America to South America.
Once we decided to skip Costa Rica and add Colombia to our travel schedule, the island hopping route through the San Blas island made perfect sense. Not only from an “I can’t wait to be on the ocean again” kind of justification but also as a (practically) more financially viable way of spending four nights and five days. Our next decision was to decide between the sailing trip or the speedboat trip (wow, really tough decisions, hey?!).
Sailing essentially means you spend the entire time on a yacht cruising along, sleeping and living on board, with maybe one or two island stops a day for the first three days then two full days of an open ocean water crossing to Colombia.
The speedboat option was more island hopping, and involved between 1-3 hours a day on a speedboat to move down the coast, with the rest of the time spent on islands, be it a deserted island for the day or an inhabited village island for the evenings where you also slept.
As we trawled through online reviews and blogs we learnt both have pros and cons. Sailing on the whole seemed to have more extreme experiences – people either had the worst experience of their life (think drunk captains; yachts breaking in the middle of the two day open water sail journey; terrible weather with no land in sight and five days of seasickness); or the most amazing experience of their life (think five star food with fresh seafood daily; perfect shipmates and crew; ideal sailing weather and sunny skies).
Whether you had experience one or two seemed largely dependent on which yacht (and therefore captain) you were allocated when you booked, something which you had little control over unless you had time to wait until your preferred was available.
On the other hand, the majority of reviews we read about the speedboat option seemed to fit somewhere in the middle – the standard of food, tour leaders and island lodging seemed to be less raved about overall, but the terrible reviews were less common. The advantage of the speedboats also meant that if the weather wasn’t fantastic (which was likely at the time of year we were travelling), it was less likely to be an issue as you would only be on the boat for a short time each day.
In the end, we decided to go for the safer option, and booked the speedboat option with San Blas Adventures. We met our tour leaders Yida and James, as well as the rest of our group the day before the tour started for a briefing.
Everyone seemed nice enough, although the main impression we walked away with was “you will get wet. Your bags will get wet. Whether it is from rain or the waves splashing over the boat, you will get wet and your bags will get wet so protect all of your belongings with plastic bags accordingly”.
I am pretty sure everyone in our tour spent that afternoon buying plastic rubbish bags from the shops, and individually wrapping every item of clothing in our backpacks and gaffe-taping them shut before wrapping bunches of bags in more bags, then placing them in our big backpacks, then wrapping THAT in another plastic bag…. it took us good few hours, but at least we would be waterproof!
We were also told to buy our own water for the duration of the trip and to buy snacks as we would not be getting those included. We found this a bit rich considering the four day / three night tour was costing us US$399 per person…
Whilst at the shops we also decided it was totally necessary to invest in a few bottles of the local rum (which, handily came in plastic bottles not glass – nice work Panama!), along with some snacks and a new fluffy towel.
Our shopping cart the night before the trip
The next morning we were up and waiting out the front of our hostel at 5am for our jeep to collect us and then drive us the 2-3 hours to Carti where we would board our speedboat for the first leg of the journey. The jeep ride was pretty bumpy and windy the last hour or so as we wound our way up and down and through the panamanian jungle to reach the coast.
By the time we reached Carti everyone was keen to get cracking, but first we all had a good laugh about the state of our backpacks wrapped in plastic bags – our big packs would be tucked away out of reach foe the duration of our trip so we had all the things we would require over the next few days in our small daypacks… also wrapped in plastic bags!
Dave… not impressed with the plastic bag backpacks!
Our group consisted of a bit of a mix – two 19 year old English lads, Milo and Hugh; their mate Nic from Switzerland; Jessie, a kiwi chick; Sophie from Denmark; a whole bunch of mid-20’s Aussie chicks – Tahlee, Aimee, Margie, Tegan; Simone from Switzerland; Max from Germany and Alex from France, both in the early 20’s; a lovely older couple from Sweden, Anders and Raquel; and then Dave and I! So we were a bit of a diverse bunch but mostly we all got along well, despite there being the definite party animals who started drinking just after breakfast most days haha.
Day 1
Our group was then split into two for the speedboat ride to our first island which we were told was an hour or two away. Dave and I started with the below crew of party animals…. from left to right… Dave, Alex, Me, Max, Nic, Hugh, Jessie (front) and Milo. Not my finest angle but a good group shot!
Speedboat selfies
The speedboats were a lot smaller than I had imagined, and very basic with no cushioning on the wooden seat-backs, which made the constant jolting as we flew through the air then landed on the waves bait damning on the old back. Regardless, the water wasn’t too rough and the trip was mostly smooth sailing. We arrived at our first (and probably one of my favourite!) deserted San Blas island, Pelicano.
The bliss of Isla de Pelicano
It was a pretty tiny island, you could walk around it in about two minutes but it was perfect! The water was crystal clear, the sand was soft and the sun was shining in the blue sky (something which unfortunately would not last!).
We were advised by Yida that we would spend a good few hours there before heading to our home island for the night where we would also be sleeping. This meant we had a good four or five hours to relax in paradise.
Some of the local Kuna people (the indigenous people of the San Blas, or Kuna Yala as they call it in their native tongue) had arrived just before us to start cooking lunch for us, and they also (clever people…) had an esky full of icy cold beers for us to buy from them for a tidy little price of US$2 per beer. Not bad really!
Before too long we had all grabbed a beer, threw off our clothes and spent the arvo chilling in the water, relaxing in the sun, playing with the soccer ball and taking photographs of our beautiful surroundings as we got to know each other. We even saw some beautiful bright orange starfish right near the shore – amazing!
Our speedboat moored on Pelicano
A couple of hours in, it was lunch time and I was absolutely rapt to see it involved fresh seafood! The Kuna had caught and barbecued up fresh fish for us and we enjoyed these along with lentils, salad and rice (and some hot sauce, one of our staples the last few months!). The lunch was simple but tasty and I was a pretty happy camper afterwards.
We were all pretty sad to say goodbye to Pelicano a couple of hours later but at the same time, excited to see what our next island paradise would hold – after all, we would be spending the night on our next stop!
Our ‘base island’ for the first night was a slightly bigger, but still ‘small’ island inhabited by a family of Kuna, called Coco Bandera. I am guessing part of the reason for calling the island this was to do with all of the coconut filled trees on the island!
Coco Bandera
Posing and the view from Coco Bandera
Dave and I actually swam from our island out to the island on the left in the photo below – we reckon it was close to a kilometre so not a bad afternoon swim! There were surprisingly not very many fish around – a couple of schools of teeny little fish but nothing big.
One of the ways that the local Kuna are supported by tourism is not just the food, accommodation or island fees we pay them for – but they also bring some of their traditional jewellery for the (mostly) females to buy.
The Jewellery Stand
You will notice in the photos that the Kuna ladies have brightly coloured bands up their calves and up their forearms – these are basically a single strand of beads wound around and around their limbs to give the appearance of a piece of clothing. The colours are so bright and its very eye catching.
Kuna Women
Anyway the Kuna women on Coco Bandera were selling some of these beaded strands and pretty much every girl on our tour bought at leads one. I bought a bright blue, yellow and red one (and actually three weeks later, I am still wearing it!)
Speaking of how the Kuna benefit from tourism, Dave and I had a bit of a weird experience actually with the Kuna and their coconuts. It is widely known and reported that the Kuna charge US$1 for a coconut, and that is what numerous members of our group paid when we asked so we knew how much cash to offer them. However when we went to pay, the Kuna we were dealing with told us they were actually US$2 each… we went back and forth a bit with him in Spanish and he just said the price has changed and the others should have paid US$2 as well.
We ended up saying forget it, and just paid what he sake. Despite it being only a minimal amount, I think it is pretty poor form of the locals to double what is a widely accepted value, especially when they would have been getting a very significant amount of money from our tour group, and we bought a lot of drinks (and jewellery – mine alone was US$15) from them.
Anyhoo. Back to the island and remembering our amazing view!
Coco Bandera had a few open air huts where hammocks were set up for us to sleep in. You can see them in the photo below (along with our backpacks in their plastic bagged encased glory!). What you might not be able to see so well is the teeny little crab holes all over the sandy floor, where crabs were scuttling to and from most of the time we were there!
Stop. Hammock time.
We also experienced our first ‘bucket shower’. It is pretty self explanatory actually – there is a large bucket in a kind of private area, filled with whatever water the locals can find (not sea water, but apart form that, anything goes), and there is usually a container next to it. You use the plastic container (in this case, the yellow one) to scoop up some water and ways yourself – or more accurately, rinse the sea water off!
Our bucket shower for night one
Everyone kind of split into a few groups for the afternoon – the young-ens hit the rum pretty much first thing in the morning so they continued drinking; whilst we did our island swim (as did a few of the other chicks); books were read and relaxing was done.
About 5pm, we all started to congregate together one a few rum cocktails and Yida and James ‘invited us’ to a sunset party on the end of the island near the volleyball net with some punch they whipped up – Jessie got a couple of great group shots which I have included below (nabbed from her Facebook page)
Sunset Party!
(photo credit for 2 above pics; Jessie Wakely; Facebook)
Before too long, it was dinner time and we were blown away (and pretty boozed by this point!) by the amazing dinner our guides and the Kuna had prepared for us – the world’s BIGGEST platter of lobster, prawn ceviche, salad, rice and more. There was that many lobsters we act got about 3 whole lobsters – I AM NOT JOKING. It was phenomenal!
After dinner, we all stayed up for another few hours, chatting and drinking around the bonfire and making s’mores. It was a great initiation into the San Blas and would be hard to top in coming days! After a quick rinse off before bed in the bucket shower, it was into our hammocks to fall asleep to the sound of the ocean crashing lightly against the sandy shore only a few metres from where we slept – BLISS.
Day 2
The next morning, Dave and I were up relatively early after a good sleep – it got pretty hot in the hammocks though so we started the day with an early morning dip in the water – perfect! After a light brekky of peanut butter and bread, and oats, we headed off around 8am to our next ‘deserted’ island which was another hour or so away and was called Isla de Iguana!
Here we would have a pretty long day, I think we stayed til about 4pm or so. The sky was more overcast and at times almost looked like it might rain, but when the sun was out, it was lethal and we were all reapplying sunscreen numerous times.
This island was bigger than either of the others we had been but unfortunately only had a pretty small amount of ‘beach’ that we could access – the jungle part of the island (about 90% of the island) was unfortunately mosquito ridden and lots of sandflies! If you have never been bitten by a sandfly – you don’t know the meaning of pain..!
Again, we spent hours just bumming by the water, snorkelling, swimming, paddling, reading, sleeping – all of these very strenuous activities were enjoyed repeatedly. I think I even fell asleep on the beach at one point! Again, the cheap beers were a great way to keep cool and stay hydrated haha
Isla de Iguana
Lunch on Day 2 was not as gourmet as the day before – we had ‘make-your-own’ sandwiches with cold ham and chicken loaf, tuna and salad. This was fine although the amount of midgies that were hanging around the food made it slightly less appetising. But when you’re ravenous and there are not a bunch of other options, you tend to really enjoy whatever you are given!
James, Yida and Jessie prepping lunch – thanks team!
By the time late afternoon rolled around, we were all keen to see our first real Kuna village which was located on the island we would be spending the night on. After only a 15 minute or so boat ride to the village, we arrived and I was pretty blown away by what we saw.
The island was called Tupile and I cannot recall exactly but I think there were a couple of thousand Kuna living there. The island itself was a fair bit bigger – it would probably take half an hour to walk its length at a stroll. The homes were thatched huts with dirt floors and set out in two main ‘streets’ on the island.
Yida was feeling crook and wanted to have a gets before dinner, so she suggested we explore the island and meet the locals on our own before coming back to the house we would be staying in, for dinner.
The village itself is pretty poor, the sewerage goes straight into the water around their homes, and we saw them swimming right there. Some of the homes are wholly on land, others are half on stilts over the water, but they were all mostly very basic – no running water here!
We were assured the locals were happy for us to take photos and the kids in particular were keen to be in photos, often running up to us and engaging in half engligh / half spanish conversations – basic conversations!
Tupile Village
And now for some of the gorgeous locals and their friendly smiles, infectious giggles and bundles of curiosity!
A couple of the young boys could not get enough of Dave – the Kuna are quite short so they could barely believe how tall Dave was. Of course, dizzy-wizzies and impromptu games of soccer soon followed!
More of the island and our group exploring….
It was really very special to be able to wander around the Kuna village and I am so grateful that the locals were happy to allow us to do so, especially with all of our cameras out.
Now, on to our lodging for the night. We were staying with one particular (I think quite wealthy by the Kuna standards) family who had one of the only two story homes on the island. It was a pretty run down home, and yes, bucket showers were on the cards again (although on this night, the water smelt pretty gross and I had to try not to breathe as I was washing myself… #islandlyfe), but our bedroom was even more ‘basic’ that I could have imagined!
Half the group had hammocks on the back deck under a hut, and half of us were spread across a few rooms. dave and I were allocated (as one of the two couples) a room to ourself but there was unfortunately no circulation or breeze in the room and we would have expired in the heat so we chose to move into the large communal bedroom on the second floor where you actually got a lovely breeze through the open windows.
The home we slept in – we slept on the second story in a big room.
Our communal bedroom
One of the hammock huts
While the rest of the group played drinking games, dave and I had a great time chatting to Anders and Raquel on the jetty. And man, have those two had an interesting life – Anders is the founder and CEO of a large Nordic travel adventure company, and they were testing out the San Blas tour in advance of their company running them later that year!
Anyway we had a great time getting to know them, and the hours flew by, until before we knew it, it was time for a tasty dinner of burritos! I didn’t’ gets photo of these, but man, they were filling! After that, it was a ‘reading in bed’ kind of night for an hour or so before we hit the hay in preparation for another big day in the sun tomorrow.
Day 3
After another very simple breakfast of bread, spreads and oats, we were off to our final ‘deserted island’ of the trip. This one was called Atidub Island and the Kuna hosting us were very friendly and even shared a few drinks and laughs with our group as we hung out there for the majority of the day.
We did some more snorkelling (they only provided goggles and snorkels, no fins, and the equipment was pretty average, which is a shame as I think good gear would have encouraged more people to take advantage of the beautiful snorkelling opportunities.
Atidub Isla
After many, many laughs at Atidub (thanks mostly to the entertainment of Margie!), we were all rather sorry to be leaving as we were told that was the last chance we would have to swim in the San Blas islands. We were off to another Kuna Village for the evening, and then the following day would be spent on the boat, going through border control and other delightful things.
The village we stayed at that night was called Caledonia and was pretty big and our accommodation was the best we had the whole trip. I didn’t get a good photo of our accommodation but once again, as couples Dave and I, and Anders and Raquel, really got lucky – we were offered first option of one of the over water cabins, which were pretty sweet. The the others got to split the remaining rooms and hammocks in cabins between them.
The jetty at Caledonia with our speedboat
Our over water cabins (we were on the very end on the right)
Before Yida started our tour of the village, we were honoured when the locals performed a traditional kuna ceremonial dance for us.
The men in their bright pink shorts and their wind flutes were cool, and the ladies and their slow, hopping / stepping dance were quite intriguing. Interestingly though, they didn’t really smile or seem too excited – I am not sure whether they have had enough of tourists, or whether it is just what they would usually be like when performing this dance!
Yida then led us around the large village and explained a lot of Kuna customs and laws to us; we watched the kids play volleyball (they have some mad skills!); and we were blown away once again by the enchanting nature of the children. They followed our group around and just could not get enough of us!
After our tour we had an hour or so to unwind and then we went to a ‘restaurant’ on the island which was basically a large room with a table where the Kuna served us fresh fish, octopus or chicken. It was pretty good, and the rum was certainly going down a treat!
Our bungalow where we hung out before and after dinner
Over the course of the next six or so hours (I think we finally went to bed about 2am), Dave and I pretty much finished off our second bottle of original rum as well as almost another full 1.5L bottle. There was about a third of us who stayed up a bit later this night – it seems to be a rotation each night who would stay up and keep drinking and who would relish the thought of a night’s sleep.
Bucket showers were once again the standard however the toilet situation was slightly more unique than previously. The toilets were basically drop toilets however if you looked into the bowl, you would see the seat water glistening below you – again, sewerage went straight into the water near the houses. We definitely would not be swimming here in the morning!
Day 4
Dave and slept really well here and it was with slightly hazy heads we woke up and packed up the next morning ready for our epic day of border contra, immigration ad customs as we transited from Panama to Colombia. This day would be a bit of a nightmare to be honest!
First of all we spent three or so hours on a REALLY bumpy speedboat ride to the little Panamania border town of Puerto Obalidia where we spent another two hours basically doing nothing except waiting to go through immigration. Everyone was hot, mostly hungover, and mostly seasick. In fact I wouldn’t really cal this a town, it was more like a station, and it really had nothing going for it – I did not think it even warranted a photo (plus my camera was tightly wrapped up in its plastic bag for the tumultuous journey!).
After finally getting our passports back it was just under an hour to make our way to the tiny Colombian village of Sapzurro where we said goodbye to our San Blas captains and waited for Yida to hire a Colombian local with a big enough boat to transport all of us the 30 minutes or so to our next stop. This is where our tour ‘officially’ ended, but given we pretty much had to travel together for the rest of the day, and up until the following day together at our own cost, we all agreed this was a bit of a cop-out on SBA’s behalf.
Sapzurro
Anyway, we then waited around for another 60-90 minutes in the roasting sun, feeling more and more seedy and seasick, before we finally got told to pack all our backpacks on the next boat and we then headed off to Capurgana.
Here we are waiting with all our stuff in Sapzurro
Capurgana sounded great in theory and San Blas Adventures strongly recommended staying an extra few nights in this tiny little seaside village before heading on, however we were more than happy to just spend the one night. Accommodation was pretty average, the power in the whole town went off during the night (so no air-con, and Colombia was HOT!) plus there was the constant smell of sewerage and diesel that you just couldn’t escape from. It was not exactly pleasant!
Unfortunately we physically couldn’t get out of there any earlier than the following day as there is only one boat per day that leaves Capurgana to head to Necocli (which is where you then basically transit to other parts of Colombia)… MISSION MUCH?!!
We had a couple of hours in the arvo to get our passports stamped (and our legal entry into Colombia – YAY!), buy out boat tickets for tomorrow and find accommodation. We also managed to enjoy a couple of sunset drinks out the front of our hostel / hotel and the sunset was pretty nice, but that smell was super off-putting!
Capurgana Sunset
Our Accommodation (can you see our blue / purple towels?!)
Yida and James had invited us to all meet up for dinner that night at a place where we were charged US$10 for dinner (a nice lasagne, I’ll give them that!), a beer and a cocktail. This was actually a nice way to say our goodbyes and wind down together as a group, but given we were literally all (except for three people) catching the same boat in the morning to Necocli, we again all thought how strange it was that the tour didn’t include our dinner and accommodation that night!
Day 5
We were all up and about quite early and met everyone back at the boat ticket office where we hung around waiting patiently for our boat so we could get the hell out of Capurgana! We then enjoyed a relatively smooth ride on a much larger boat than we were used to (still not a ferry by any means!), and arrived in Necocoli about two and a half hours later. We then hung around for another 60-90 minutes waiting for our bus to arrive which we then took all the way from Necocli to Cartagena… phew! What a full on couple of days of transit / journeying we had done. The relaxing peace of the San Blas islands felt like a lifetime ago!
So what was my overall impressions of San Blas Adventures and the San Blas islands? Compared to the Belize sailing trip we did with Raggamuffin Tours, it unfortunately came out short.
Compared to Belize, the food was pretty average, the sleeping arrangements were pretty basic, the fact we had to provide and buy all of our own water (which for five days added up!) was ridiculous considering the price we paid, the fact the included tour ended about a day earlier than it really should have considering the mandatory costs we all had to still pay, the less professional and friendly nature of the guides – all of these things added up to leave us with an experience of SBA that I am not entirely sure I would recommend.
I feel like another company could come in pretty easily, up the ante and standards and make a killing stealing all of SBA clients. But on the other hand, the beautiful islands we visited, the lovely Kuna children who were so full of smiles and showed us around their islands so willingly, the people we met – all of these things made up for the shortfalls.
Don’t get me wrong, its a great experience and its certainly an adventure, just be prepared! And overall, I am definitely glad we did the tour – we met some great people who I hope we can see again in either Oz or their home countries, and it was much more fun than flying, however for the high cost of what we paid, I think there could be some improvements made.
On another, partly related note, I’ll leave you with one final photo collection – on our nine hour bus ride from Capurgana to Cartagena, we were diverted off the main road because this had happened only an hour or before….eeeeep!
What have we got to expect from the rest of Colombia… stay tuned to find out!