BBQ Island

Today’s adventure followed the comfortable routine we’ve become accustomed to. Make sure you’re up by 7 am, which is earlier than we rise at home. Make yourself presentable for breakfast and head to the dining room for a breakfast that is different every morning. Return to the room to slather on sunscreen, stuff the essential clothing du jour into the pack along with cameras, water bottles, and sometimes even some money and any other stuff for the day. Today we grabbed snorkels and fins and wore the water shoes. Head to the fantail, grab a PFD and put it on, slide your ‘ashore’ magnet, and get on the next skiff. It’s very organized and efficient and we are soon on our way for the day.

Today we headed for one of the very small islands in the San Blas Islands, colloquially called BBQ island. It is owned by one of the indigenous Kuna Yala groups. Visitors are welcome to come play on the island for a small fee and member families in the group take turns each day at the island to receive the visitors. Those families also bring their handcrafted textile art to sell. The island is only 1-2 acres and is quite the tropical paradise island. White coral beaches, palm trees shading the island, reefs at the edge of the island, and more beautiful islands to view from the beach.

Visitors, selling fabric art, and selling coconuts are major sources of income for the locals – we were told to leave any coconuts alone as they are like cash

Kayaks all lined up for us

We joined one of the snorkeling groups for a morning snorkel off one of the skiffs. At the first stop we all jumped in and as soon as she hit the water, Tami realized she had left her PFD on. She had also grabbed a noodle. She was very buoyant. Extremely buoyant. (Mike said she was floating ABOVE the water.) She didn’t want to try and struggle out of it while in the water, but she certainly had no fear of sinking.

We swam back to the skiff to clamber back on and head to another site. The side of the skiff is fairly high and Tami once again showed her flair for grace as she launched herself out of the water and up and over the side of the skiff, right onto the floor of the skiff. She was fine, only slightly embarrassed. And off we went for more snorkeling, although Tami wisely shed the PFD for the next round.

One of the other passengers

Brain coral

Coral

Fish

Tami was particularly excited to spot some squid

More coral

We saw a large variety of coral and a fair number of fish. After heading back to the island we had time to wander the island, which did not take long, and find a few treasures for purchase from the Kuna Yala, including a dashing hat for Mike that he can even wear to Sounders games.

Tami enjoyed seeing the Kuna Yala art, since she is so into fabric art herself. The technique seems to combine cutting slits in the cloth to let a backing color show through, applique (sewing a piece of cloth onto of another), and embroidery.

Kuna Yala woman with her art for sale

Another one of the artists

Kuna Yala family at the beach

Crew playing volleyball after lunch

Tami after lunch

What Tami was looking at

Local kid and his sister borrowed one of the paddle boards

After lunch we decided to forego the skiff snorkeling and just donned our snorkels and floated around exploring the areas right next to the island where we saw an even greater variety of fish. We both enjoyed the freedom of just gently swimming along and observing the myriad life below us, so unapparent from the surface. We swam and swam, and several others were enjoying swimming and relaxing in the water around us. It was beautifully sunny despite the dark clouds that seemed to hang off in the distance and periodically dump showers in the distance.

Little fish all around us

Locals in a boat viewed while swimming

So we swam some more, then at one point we both stood up and realized that no one else was around us anymore. Where did everyone go? And wow, those dark, really really black clouds sure did move in fast and were awfully close! We hightailed it back to the beach and madly gathered up our gear, quickly put those PFDs back on (easier said than done), and started looking for a skiff to the ship. Within seconds a great wind picked up and we could just feel that rain cloud heading our way. One of the snorkel skiffs was just pulling into the beach so everyone could grab their gear before turning around and heading to the ship. It was quite full but we managed to get the last two spots and as we made our way to the ship the clouds opened and we got to experience a true tropical deluge. The air became water, spray came from the bow, we were wetter than wet. Well, at least it washed off a lot of the sea salt!

One good thing about getting soaked (and this was even more soaked than our day with the Embera, if that’s possible) is that it feels so darn good to get back to the ship, take a shower, put on dry clothes, and head to the lounge to see what the delicious treat was awaiting us that day. And have our choice of liquid refreshment, of course.