Day 05- Fri 9/14/2018 San Blas Island, Panama

Shortly before noon we arrived at our anchorage point to visit San Blas Island, Panama. Prior to our arrival we attended a coffee chat with Joep and Dr. Martin Cohen, an Australian Biologist and a talk on the formation of Panama, 'An Invented Country' by Dr. Tommie Sue Montgomery. My wife attended a presentation on the music and dance of Costa Rica. I watched the Zodiac boat get lowered to the water, boarded, and then tested. There's no word yet on when those will be available.

We ate a leisurely lunch before catching a tender to the Island. It's nice to be a 4 Star Mariner so we can take any tender we want. Upon arrival at the Island, we walked around and took photographs ($1 for pictures of persons). The Island is quite small and a part of a group of some 49 islands and home to the Cuna indigenous tribe. There's a lot of litter all over the Island and if one wanted to swim, a $10/pp boat ride to another unspoiled Island would be necessary. The handicrafts being sold were very colorful with the foot square panels going for $10 to $20. Children with all sorts of pets (dogs, cats, a Ñieque (a giant member of the rat family), parrots, a monkey, a lizard, and other small birds made for interesting camera subjects. For $5 we even took a tour of a house which turned out to be a backpacker's hotel. People generally slept on hammocks and there were a number of little shops for the locals plus there were at least two schools. The dominate brand of outboard motor for their small boats seemed to be Yamaha. There were no cars or bicycles on the island. Solar power and satellite TV was prevalent and I heard one generator running and saw the remains of another.

Back on board the Maasdam, we attended a chat session with 3 of the presenters and learned that the community had just decided a few days ago to move to the mainland.  

After a nice Lido dinner we attended a Kim Macquarrie presentation on the building of the Panama Canal which we are going to transit tomorrow. There was nothing new in his presentation that we hadn't seen in the 2.5 hours of Panama Canal movies the night before. However, his delivery of the material was quite good.

KK then hosted a story telling time about a famous French painter Govin who worked a very short time on the Panama Canal. She also entertained questions about tomorrow's transit of the Canal. We learned we can't use the bow area for viewing the transit as the zodiac preparations are still being completed. She also showed us the Mula (tapestry) that the tribal leader presented the Captain today to honor the Maasdam's first visit to the Island. It sort of like the inaugural port visit plaques that are presented to ships. She'll get it framed.  

Since we plan to get up early for the transit, we went to bed early tonight and skipped a showing of the latest Star Wars movie. Stay tuned.