Visiting the Kuna Indians-Sail-World's Blackwattle

by Nancy Knudsen on 20 Mar 2007 I am standing on the bow of Blackwattle, bare feet planted each side of the anchor on the varnished gunwale, back against the fabric furler of the forestay. It’s a cotton wool cloud day, and there’s a sweet smelling 15-knot breeze tickling the sea into a small chop, more like a chopette.

Polaroids on, loving the sun on my skin, I’m staring over the deep blue waters ahead looking for tell-tale signs of coral reefs or shoals. There are thirteen palm-tree-sprouting islands dotted around me, looking like ragged broom tops, yet I know that incredibly somewhere out there are more than 300 of these magic islands.

I am in the famed San Blas.

'A little to the left,' I call into my small two-way Cockpit-to-Bow mike. Ted, steering, hears me, and the boat changes direction slightly, missing a coral outcrop.

We’ve been here a few days, chilling out after stimulating journey from the ABC Islands via the Colombian coastline and Cartagena. Now life has been reduced to utter simplicity with the arrival of the San Blas.

Anchored with less than a metre under the keel, the anchor visible from the bow in the clear water, we have swum, snorkelled and slept in what so many people have called Paradise. We’ve met another Australian boat who arrived here a year ago meaning to stay a couple of weeks, and simply couldn’t find a strong enough reason to move on –

‘That’s the way the San Blas gets you…’ explains Allan, an ex-electronics engineer from Sydney. ‘Why go home? Parking meters, parking fines, traffic… then you spend money on clothes and restaurants, cars, houses. Here we are in Paradise, yet we spend nothing.’ So they intend to stay – there’s no rule against this – you must renew your documentation every now and then, and there are dozens of ‘local’ yachts that stay for years..

They have made their own community. We listen to their morning ‘Cruisers Net’ on the HF Radio, and listen to their chatting about yoga lessons and scrabble days, birthday parties and beach barbecues.

The ‘Congreso General Kuna’ have come by in a longboat, to explain to us through a translator the rules of the Kuna Indians who live in the San Blas: no spear fishing, no lobster catching, keep your garbage, dress properly if you visit an island… and about how every coconut tree is owned by ‘someone’ so please don’t steal the coconuts.

We’ve paid US$10 for the privilege of anchoring here for three months, and we are told that local villages may ask for an extra $5. The Kuna Indians are very organised, determined to control their own destinies, but very welcoming to yachts, from whom they derive dollars, to supplement their subsistence way of life.

It’s a delight to see these tiny indigenous people(they are one of the smallest races on earth) taking matters into their own hands, and controlling their own future in a peaceful and organised way.

So now we are off to anchor near an island where one of the ‘Master Mola Makers’ of the San Blas lives, to visit the Mormake Tupu village on the island of Maquina, and maybe buy one of two of the amazing molas. These are rectangles of complex appliquéd fabric, meant as bodices for women, but used by Westerners for cushion covers or tablemats or in multiples for bed quilts, or just framing.
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Later that day:
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The Master Mola Maker’s brother, Idelfonso Restrepo, welcomes us to his wharf, made mostly of bamboo. Idelfonso is extremely unusual in the San Blas, in that he speaks English.
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'No no,' he explains in answer to my question, 'the school here only teaches Spanish as a foreign language. I taught myself English with a dictionary.

Yes, it was very difficult. Only after three years I started to speak, and now after six years and much practice with the cruisers, I can speak okay.'

Idelfonso explains that first we must pay our respects to the Sahilas of the village – the chiefs, who are elected every four years. We are led through bamboo and coconut alleyways, thatched huts all around, followed by a train of giggling curious kids, the youngest ones running cutely quite naked.

After much shaking of hands with the Sahilas secretary, and in return for our US$5.00 fee, we are given permission to anchor in Maquina waters for one month, renewable. It is all explained very carefully, and we are given a hand written scrap of paper, duly signed, and sealed with the ink-stamp of the village.

Idelfonso then takes us for a walk around the village.
[Sorry, this content could not be displayed] We visit his house, a long narrow bamboo walled thatched hut. It is dark inside, slats of light spearing the darkness from the cracks between the bamboos. We are led from his wharf on the water, where the washing hangs, past the ‘kitchen’ with an open fire, public rooms, bedrooms, and then his ‘shop’ where he sells T shirts and lollies, on the ‘street’. One of the women offers to give me a traditional 'beading' of the wrist. Kuna women bead their entire legs and arms as decoration. (See picture below)

One narrow corridor joins the rooms, all off to one side. The floor is hard packed fine dirt. We wander at will through the narrow alleyways and buy some molas from Idelfonso’s brother, Venancio. We understand that only women can make molas. However, if a family has no daughters, one of the children can be brought up as a girl child, and this is how one gets to be a ‘Master’ Mola maker. Venancio speaks almost no English, but seems to be in charge of a bamboo-walled factory of women who make the dozens of molas they sell to tourists, who are mostly cruisers.

It’s an incredible afternoon, and we feel privileged as to be able to walk this impressive village.

How sad that we cannot stay in the San Blas longer, and how many times have we said this in our circumnavigation. Panama calls, and in the morning we shall sail another overnight to reach the last marina that we shall be able to visit for many months…..
Here are some more images from Maquita Island:

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