The San Blas Islands and Panama City

On 25th February we started our epic trip from Cartagena, Colombia to Panama via the picture-perfect San Blas Islands. This was a five-day sailing trip through the Caribbean and is technically sailing from one continent to another! Currently it is impossible to travel via land between Colombia and Panama as you would need to cross through the Darien Gap which is a 100km stretch of mountainous rainforest jungle and vast swampland which has no roads. The only viable options are to travel via boat or plane, and we decided boat would be much more exciting. The trip would begin with two nights and one day of sailing through open water and no land in sight, then 3 days exploring the San Blas islands and finally an overnight sail to the north coast of Panama. This was something we had been looking forward to for almost a year when we started planning our trip and it was also kindly given to us as a wedding present from some of our wedding guests.

The first day started with us heading to the marina on the outskirts of the old town of Cartagena. Here we saw our boat for the first time, met the crew and some of the other guests. ‘La Gitanita’ is a 51-foot sailing boat with two sails and is owned by a young French man and luckily, she looked in pretty good nick. The main reason for going to the boat in the morning was to drop of our large rucksacks which would be stored in the hull of the boat, and we would only have our small day bags with us in our cabin. We also had to pay the final amount and handover our passports. The crew keep our passports until the end of the trip, and that day they took them to the immigration office in Cartagena to get the required Colombian exit stamp. It was at this point one of the crew realised that Rory’s passport had an exit stamp instead of an entry stamp for when he entered Colombia 5 weeks previously. They assured us this would be fine and said, “they are often not very good at their job!” Once we had chosen our cabin which we were sharing with one other girl we headed back to the old town in Cartagena for the rest of the day.

At 8pm we went back to the boat and had proper introductions with the crew and guests. In total there would be twelve guests and three crew. The guests were all from various countries in Europe (Holland, Switzerland and Denmark), the captain from Colombia, first mate Panama and chef from Guatemala. After we all headed to a supermarket to stock up on supplies. The boat provided three meals a day (the food was amazing, but at this point we didn’t know that) so we decided to buy a few snacks and alcohol as this wasn’t provided. We were pleased to see that it wasn’t just our trolley filled with beers and rum! The boat had no fridge and just one big cool box filled with ice to keep the beers cold. Luckily between all the guests we had a good beer chilling rotation system going on and everyone was very happy to share their cold drinks throughout the trip. We all had a light meal for dinner which was advised by the crew. As the first couple of nights were going to be quite rough and we were also advised to take seasickness pills. More on this later 🤢!

We set sail and left the harbour at about 11pm. The journey to the San Blas islands is about 36 hours and as it is often a bit calmer at night, it is better to spread this time over two nights and one day. After a very rocky first night on the boat (Liv almost fell out the bed because the boat was on such an angle) we headed up to the deck of the boat at around 7am. We were both surprised how remote we were! We thought we would be hugging the shoreline for the first couple of days, but we were in completely open water with no land insight at all! The waves were constantly rolling our boat from side to side and really testing our seasickness mediation. Luckily the medication worked well for Rory, and he was absolutely fine. Liv felt a little queasy at times but luckily wasn’t sick. Unfortunately, two of the other guests were having a really hard time and spent the first two days being sick over the back of the boat. We felt really sorry for them because the rest of us were enjoying life at sea and taking in this amazing experience. We even saw pods of Dolphins which followed the boat. Whilst the main part of the trip is the San Blas islands, we both really enjoyed the first leg of the journey which had a real sense of adventure. The crew did a great job at keeping us safe and despite the rocky conditions they still cooked us some yummy food, all whilst only having a handful of hours of sleep between them.

After a second night of being rolled around and almost falling out of bed we woke up to calm seas and could tell we had dropped the anchor and weren’t moving. This could only mean one thing...we had arrived! We quickly got changed and rushed to the deck to get our first glimpse of the San Blas islands. It’s hard to find words to describe how beautiful they are. We had read lots of reviews on the trip and seen photos online but only when you see them for the first time you can appreciate how idyllic the palm tree islands are. The water is crystal clear, the sand is as soft and white as flour and the palm trees are so perfect they don’t look real. The next three days were spent sailing between the desert islands, snorkelling the coral reefs, swimming off the boat, exploring the islands and lying on the beach. In the evenings we would drop anchor and use a rib to get to an island for the nights activities. Here the crew would cook us fresh fish and lobsters they had caught in the day. We toasted marshmallows on the bonfire and played drinking games. We would then head back to the boat and sleep there.

In total there are about 400 islands in the San Blas region. Most of them are tiny and would take about 20 minutes at a leisurely pace to walk around. Many of the islands have a small number of people living on them, usually a family of around 10 people. They survive by trading between islands and by selling arts and crafts to tourists as well as fresh fish and lobsters to visiting boats. Often when we were on the boat with the anchor dropped, locals would come up to us on their wooden canoes and try to sell us seafood or bracelets. It’s amazing to think people live and survive in this remote island region. Whilst the San Blas is part of Panama they are very self-sufficient and many of the locals would like to be independent. On evening whilst we were on an island, there was a large debate between many of the locals. The island we were on was one of the more popular islands for boats to visit. There you could buy fish, local art and play volleyball, all of which was bringing in money. Each year the family running that island changes but the family currently in charge had been doing a really good job, they had decided that the current family should stay on in charge and they were debating for how many years. We heard this from our crew who told us the verdict was 7 extra years. It was certainly interesting to see some local politics taking place right before our eyes!

After three days of living in paradise, it was time to get back to reality and head to mainland Panama. First, we had to go to the immigration office to get our entry stamp for Panama. The office was on another idyllic islands and was just a tiny shed. We all joked at how unofficial it was as the captain raced off in the tender with our passports. We sailed through the night and arrived in Puerto Lindo the next morning. We said goodbye to our amazing crew. All three of them were great and really made the trip a special experience. We had a shuttle bus arranged to take us to Panama City where we said farewell to the rest of the group, a really great bunch of people.

When we arrived in Panama City we crashed in our hotel and then had a very relaxed couple of days by the pool. We had no idea how tired we had become after those rocky nights on the boat. We did however visit the Spanish old quarter know as ‘Casco Viejo’, which was built in 1671 and was filled with old imposing colonial style buildings and cute cobbled lanes. Apparently less than 20 years ago this area was really rough but since then it has been designated a UNESCO world heritage site and is now filling up with chic coffee shops and boutique hotels. There are still a lot of old buildings that only have the façade remaining and are completely derelict inside apart from trees which are growing in them. What an amazing project it would be to bring back one of these imposing buildings to its former grandeur!

No trip to Panama would be complete without a visit to the famous Panama Canal. Only a 20-minute Uber ride from our hotel is the Miraflores visiting centre where we could witness the locks operating in action and we also watched a very good 3D film about the creation of the canal and how it works narrated by Morgan Freeman. The canal is one of the 7 wonders of the modern world, and it was fascinating to learn the history behind the 82km canal which connects the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. The original canal was opened in 1914, however in 2016 it was extended to accommodate the world’s biggest container ships, keeping the canal relevant in the modern world. All captains of ships passing through the canal have to hand over control to specialist canal captains who navigate the ships through the canal. In the original canal these are guided by locomotives on tracks, which you can see in the image below.

The climate in Panama was tropical, hot and humid and the American influence was extremely obvious in the city particularly through the sky rise buildings, the fast-food chains and the use of the US Dollar everywhere. The difference in price between Colombia and Panama was crazy and we were surprised by how expensive the city was in comparison to Cartagena.

After 4 nights in Panama, we took a flight north to LA and would be leaving Latin America after nearly 4 months. Our sailing trip through the San Blas islands was truly amazing and was worth every penny. The pure unspoilt beauty of the islands is something we will never forget, and it was really like being in a desert island paradise.