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| Kuna Ladies |
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| The Lizards! |
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| Lizard loves the Pirate |
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| Kuna Boat |
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| Our room at Cabana Narasgandup |
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Last night has become the worst night of sleep that I’ve
ever had surpassing the really hot night we spent in Granada, Nicaragua. I decided to sleep in our hammock in
the main house because I couldn't stand the smell in our cabana and it was
flooded anyway. My super powerful
sniffer can be a burden sometimes. Jon put up the hammock for me and it was
pretty comfortable. He couldn’t
smell anything in our cabana so he slept in our bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I started to feel water
dripping on my head inside the hammock under the roof. The roof wasn’t leaking in this spot
but it was pouring rain and the wind was blowing the water in the side of the house and
getting it on me. Eventually, it became too wet for me to stay there. I tried to move the hammock to another
more interior pole but the hammock was too wet to sleep in at that point. The rain slowed down a little so I trudged through the pond
to ask Jon if it was dry in our room.
He was sleeping peacefully so I decided to come back to the room even
though it smelled very musty. We
slept through the rest of the night without any problems.
I awoke to something weird moving around by my feet. This turned out to be a cat that wanted
to make its bed on my bed. I gave
it a little shove onto the floor but it came back again and again. Apparently, we were sleeping in his bed, but because humans take precedence over other
animals we won the battle for the bed.
Jon had done a little scouting yesterday around the island and found
another place for us to stay. They had wood floors! So, after breakfast at
Ina’s we quickly carried our bags over to our new accommodations before it
started raining. Cabanas
Narasgandup was a big upgrade.
They have wood floors, clean sheets & pillows, and a light in our
room. Their bathrooms were also
quite nice as they actually have a toilet with a seat and all you have to do to
flush is push the handle. (Back at
Ina’s the toilets were seatless and if you wanted to flush you had to fill up a
bucket of water, dump it in the upper deck, and then use your hand to pull the
plug)-UGH!!! I was much happier at
Cabana Narasgandup. That's a
really long name so I’ll just call it Caba’dup now.
The rain held out for a bit and we were even able to go
snorkeling for a little while before lunch. The snorkeling in the area was, like Portobello, very nice
for non-fish life. We saw a couple
schools of fish swimming around but mainly it was really interesting little
anemones and corals. Lunch was really good with a local pescado called Bonita,
platacones (plantains), enselada (salad), and pina (pineapple). It was a huge lunch and I had to give
my leftover fish to Jon and we couldn’t eat all the plantains. We thought that the fish might have
been caught just earlier today because when we were snorkeling Jon saw a native
Kuna zoom by him underneath the water with a 2-pronged spear, flippers and a
snorkel. He gave Jon the thumbs up
and went after a school of fish.
After lunch we walked around the island, which is very small.
After returning from our walk, Jon bought a couple cans of
coke for us.
We played dominoes (I beat him twice - I’m on a roll) and drank our
cokes. While sitting there playing dominoes in our cabana lizards just started
showing up left and right. Before
this, we had commented that it seemed like there weren’t many animals on this island except
birds. So, for
these guys to show up in such multitudes right then it was a little weird. They were probably about an inch to two
inches long and seemed to be some sort of gecko. There were six or so of them and they weren’t scared of us
at all. They seemed to be admiring
our stuff, which I thought was a little weird. They even let us pick them up. Several of them had tried to climb into my coke but since I was
still drinking it I shooed them away.
After I finished I let them have it just to see what would
happen and they went crazy. They swarmed the can of coke and started licking the residual
sweetness off of the outside of the can.
Then a brave soul hooked his tail to the lip of the can and dangled
himself in to get the pot of gold still left in the can. After this it was kind of like King of
the Hill (the altitude supremacy game not the tv show) because only the largest of the lizards was allowed to stay on
the top of the can. If another
smaller one would try to steal a lick the largest one would run him off with a
couple displays of dominance that included tail whacking and putting his head
on the other one's head. All in all
it was not very aggressive but each one seemed to know who was in charge. At one time I had 3 lizards on my coke
can! (See pics)
For dinner we asked the guy to give us smaller portions
because lunch was so big and we aren’t use to eating so much but something got
lost in translation because we received a very good but very large dinner of rice,
fish, lentils and salad. Jon
shared his rum with the guys who work at the cabanas and we had a nice
conversation with the jefe (boss) in Spanish which is neither of ours'
native language. I also
bought a Mola (Kuna quilted fabric squares depicting wildlife) for mi madre
and hope to make it into a pillow when I get home because they only sell the fabric
squares. I guess some people might
frame them as well. We’ll probably
spend the evening reading and playing dominoes. Muy tranquillo.
~Marcie
* Marcie’s Ponderings
Lately, during our travels we have been meeting and hearing
a lot about Israelis. We met one
the other night at Luna’s who has family in Moncks Corner, SC, which is very
close to Charleston. We also met a
nice couple that is also staying at Ina’s. Several times though we have heard from other travelers
(including other Israelis) that we might not want to go or stay someplace
because there are lots of Israelis there.
We became curious as to why we should avoid them. Some folks mentioned that they could be
a little defensive and aggressive when it came to conversations and that big
groups of them together could be very overwhelming. After talking to the nice couple at Ina’s last night I found
out that all Israelis (men and women) have to go through the Army when they
graduate high school. This sounds
horrible. I would never want to be
forced to do something like that.
I can’t even imagine going through a process or organization that
controls what you do every minute.
I can see why a lot of the Israeli travelers who are only recently
released from the Army when they begin their traveling seem so defensive when
you speak with them that they become offensive.
Thursday, April
26 2012
After a day and night at Caba’dup, I was very glad we
switched accommodations. Our room
was breezy and dry, with a wooden floor (piso madera), table and chairs and
even a solar powered light that is activated from 6-11pm. We switched places around 10am
yesterday and I was a little concerned that maybe we hurt Ina’s feelings. Jon mentioned though that it was
completely rain related and had nothing to do with whether we liked Ina or not
and he was a nice guy and his wife cooked us great meals. So I thought we would give him a nice
review, but recently I have changed my mind. Ina is quite childish.
Let me recap.
Getting to the islands is a little difficult. We had to book Ina’s Cabanas through Luna’s Castle hostel in
Panama City. Most cabanas in the
San Blas were booked so they kind of steered us to Ina’s through Lam Tours, the
company arranging the 4x4 jeep ride out there. Our current lodgings here at Caba’dup are not part of the
Lam Tour deal I suppose because they are one price step up from budget. The next morning Lam took us out to the
port to meet the boat. Then the
boat, which is Kuna owned and lodging affiliated brings us to the island. It's also the boat we're supposed to
take back to the mainland when we leave.
We're supposed to tell guys at our cabana the day before we want to go
so they can call the boat guy who brings us back to the mainland where we meet
the 4 x 4 jeep guy from Lam who brings us back to Panama City. We're currently on an island that is
off the grid and we don’t have any access to phones or internet to take care of
this ourselves. We've already
paid for the 4 x4 ride but have to pay for the boat when it happens. No big deal. However, since our new lodging is not affiliated with the
budget Lam Tour deal (Ina and his cousin Robinson, the only other places to stay
on the island, are) they also aren’t part of the boat deal so our guy at
Caba’dup said we should go ask Robinson (Ina’s cousin) to
call the boat for us.
We went to do this today and were coldly told by Robinson
that we had to talk to Ina. At
this point I started to smell something fishy (figuratively). We then walked to Ina and let him know
we needed a ride back tomorrow. A
guy from the boat ride over was also standing next to Ina. Ina then proceeds to tell us that it’s
not his problem because we don’t stay with him anymore. So, I said to the other guy, “What
about you?” He just shrugs. Jon told Ina that we didn’t have any
problem with him and we only wanted a room with a wooden floor because it had
been raining so much. He then says
he doesn’t have any minutes on his phone.
Very childish. I’m shooting
them both dirty looks by now.
So we walk back and tell our guy at Caba'dup. He says “no problemo” and calls the tour company for
us. Apparently everything is
worked out and we are going to leave tomorrow at 9am. We hope. Ina
doesn’t know who he is messing with though because when I get back to the
mainland I’m going to blow up the backpacker websites with bad reviews about
Ina’s Cabanas on Isla Naranjo Chico.
After lunch we paid our guys at Caba’dup to take us by boat
to Isla Perro, which is about 30 minutes from our island and is great for
snorkeling. The snorkeling was
nice because there’s a shipwreck from 1959 and we were able to snorkel around
that but the current was really strong and made it a little difficult. We had about a half an hour of some
really nice sunshine over on Isla Perro and it's easy to see why the San Blas islands
are considered to be so beautiful.
A few of days ago we had asked a couple from Robinson’s
Cabanas who rode over with us on the boat from the mainland if they wanted to
go on this snorkel trip and they accepted. They're a nice couple from Ireland (Nick) and Sweden
(Malin) and now I’m a little concerned that they might get blacklisted from
Robinson’s and Ina’s now that they came to our side of the island.
Our side of the island seems to have an issue with the
other side of the island. It must
be some long-standing tribal dispute but when we decided to switch to a room with
a floor we were put smack dab in the middle of that Kuna Indian feud. Our side of the island is very clean
and as I’ve said already it’s considered a step up from budget. But for the
differences in quality I'll gladly pay the extra $15/person. It was mainly because of all the rain
we’ve had that we moved but after the move I am very impressed with the way
Caba’dup’s place is run. It’s a
business and not just someone’s house.
I enjoy staying with families but you need to have a bit of
professionalism when you have people staying at your place and Ina’s does not
have that. Ok, I think I’ve done
enough ranting about Ina.
After our trip out to Isla Perro we returned back to
Caba’dup on Isla Naranjo Chico and enjoyed some of the only sunny weather we’ve
seen in the last week or so. We
read books in the hammock that we strung up between two palm trees and had a
nice dinner prepared by the Caba’dup Crew including El Presidente, of fried
bonita fish, french fries, cole slaw and baked beans. We also finalized our boat transportation back to mainland
Panama for tomorrow morning. Since
we're blacklisted from the Ina/Robinson boat that we were originally supposed
to take we're now going with the Caba’dup Crew for only $5 per person (Ina
charges $10). Watch out INA!!!!
~Marcie
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