An Austrian Experience in the San Blas Islands

The first two days of the trip were to be spent sailing and seeing nothing but the open ocean.  This would have been true, but the wind didn’t cooperate, so we were under power of the dual inboard motors for the entire trip.  We both became sea sick, Julia got the worst of it.  Although we were all offered cabins, five of the fifteen of us spent the night curled up on various surfaces within the enclosed deck.  It rained every night, but was usually sunny by breakfast. 

We were happy to see the first set of San Blas Islands on the morning of the third day.  Before breakfast on the third day we made the 100 yard swim from the boat to the island.  We walked around the circumference of the entire island in less than 30 minutes.  On the island we saw huge conch shells larger than the size of coconuts.  We were also appalled by the amount of litter that was on these beautiful white sand beaches.  According to our Captain the trash had drifted over from Europe into the Caribbean Sea.  It became more apparent as the trip went on that the European’s were indeed the culprits, but in a different way than Fritz had originally explained.  We were all a little appalled when Fritz instructed us to dispose of absolutely everything by throwing it overboard when we were finished with it.  This included but was not limited to cigarette butts, beer cans, all left over food, cardboard, etc.  We were promised the best food on the sea but we were not overly impressed.  Each morning for breakfast we had freshly cooked Austrian bread with sandwich fixings. For lunch and dinner we pretty much always had a form of pasta or pancakes.  There was always freshly made lemonade to drink and tea in the mornings. Fresh fruit also lined the width of the boat in hanging baskets.  All in all the food was pretty good for being on sea.  The best part of the trip was definitely spent on the islands snorkeling.  The water was easily the clearest I have ever seen and maybe even the warmest saltwater I have ever been in.  We even got to go on a guided lobster gathering trip one afternoon with a descendent of the Kuna Indians.  The man took 13 of us in a small wooden boat with an outboard motor to a reef near by.  We were under the assumption going into it that the man we explain to us tactical ways to find and gather the lobsters.  This was not the case.  We dropped the anchor near the reef and before we knew it the Indian was in the water swimming away from the boat.  Realizing that Indian was nearly impossible to keep up with we stayed in small groups and experienced some amazing coral reefs and beautiful fish.  We kept a look out for lobster, but saw very few and gathered even less.  We were surprised when the Indian came back to the boat with a goody bag full of eleven large lobsters.  We made our way back to the catamaran and enjoyed some very tasty grilled lobster in garlic and butter.  Our Captain / Chef also made some paella (white rice, onion, and bell pepper dish) to accompany the lobster feast.  After spending three days island hopping around San Blas we were taken to the main land and driven to Panama City.  We were mostly happy to be off the small confined boat, but the island hopping portion of the trip was amazing.  We literally felt like we were in paradise.