We couldn’t resist returning to San Blas for New Year!

Since Panama was in lockdown for the festive season, we figured that if we are going to have to be alone, we may as well do it in a beautiful place. So we lifted the anchor and pointed her bow in the direction of San Blas once again!

The 10 hour sail there went by quickly, mostly because we were being kept busy by the fishing. We hooked onto a lovely big Mackrel, which filled the fridge for our time in isolation.

Our first anchorage was one of our favourites in the Holandese Cays. It has the most incredible reef, and you can anchor quite close to the island. As we know this part of San Blas well we didn’t stay too long as we wanted to explore new islands. The next day after a quick snorkel Nathan took the helm with Dylan as his crew and we sailed off to the ridiculously hard to pronounce Gannirguinnitdup.

This island was simply stunning! We were the only ones there, the weather conditions were perfect, the boys could not wait for us to get the dinghy down to go and explore, so they launched the paddle board and paddled to land.

We couldn’t believe we had not stopped at this beautiful island before.

We had a great time exploring the islands and huts on it, picking up plastic as we walked, BBQing at lunchtimes and generally just being together. 

We saw in the new year very quietly, with Shawn and I in bed by 9pm and the boys determined to stay up for when the clock struck 12am! At 12.01 they were fast asleep!

After being at anchor alone for a couple days eventually a couple of friends joined us. Alex and Anabel on their boat Intrepido and Steve and Ruby on Easy Breezy. Sadly the wind had picked up before they arrived so the anchorage was not as idyllic as we had described it to them when they arrived, as it was a little rally from the swell.

None the less they were happy to be there and all came on board Mokara with a fresh Baracuda curry to share! 

After a few days we decided to move as the swell had picked up considerably and it was getting quite difficult to sleep at night and to land the dinghy on the beach. 

Alex was desperate for a regatta, so challenged us to a race to the next anchorage. Now the boys knew from the start that we were never going to win! Mokara is built for comfort not speed! But that didn’t stop us putting up a good fight, and having loads of fun doing it! Shawn had us at the start line at 10am sharp. Unfortunately the boys prediction was right, Intrepido took the lead from early on and left us desperately trying to catch her! Of course we moaned that we had extra crew and therefore extra weight and that was why we didn’t finish first!

Our new anchorage was another perfect setting. We anchored in front of an island which was tiny and had only 3 palm trees growing on it. We took the dinghy to the larger island as we could see there were some Guna Indians living there and we wanted to wish them a Happy New year and check if they were ok with us being there and if they needed anything. Luckily for us Alex and Anabel are Spanish, so are able to communicate with the Gunas much better than we could. They were able to find out all about the family which was living on the island. She found out that a Dad and his son were currently moving to the island for a couple months and that the rest of their family would join them in a few weeks time. The Dad was more than happy to have us there and even offered for us to sleep in one of the huts he had build for the night. Of course we couldn’t pass up this amazing opportunity. After a lovely walk around the island we went back to Mokara to get all the food, hammocks and sleeping bags.

We had a great evening chatting under the stars. I went back to sleep on Mokara whilst the boys stayed the night in their hammocks.

The boys had made a new friend Jaun. He was so small, we initially thought he was only around 4 or 5 years old, but his Dad told us he was 8! The Kuna people are very small, Juan’s Dad looked young enough to be his older brother!

The boys played football with Juan for most of the following day, and the rest of the day they helped clean the island of plastic. It was great to get Juan involved and show him that we don’t like the fact that the plastic is washing up on his beach. We didn’t want to ignore it, as after all – the plastic washing up on his beach is most probably coming from the developed world. With Juan’s help we made a real difference to the beach! 

We had another boat join us and we were invited to have our lunch at Juan and his Dad’s living area.

We all shared the food we had, and I could see Juan was not that impressed with some of the foods he was given. His Dad was trying to get him to try them, but in true kid style he wasn’t having it! I’m guessing his diet consists mostly of fish and rice, so although we had lots of fish to share with him we also had lots of salads, pasta which he wasn’t use to.

We spend a couple more days relaxing and playing with Juan. We really didn’t want to leave him!

Although he only spoke Kuna, the boys were able to communicate with him and they all seemed to get on very well, despite the massive culture difference!

Eventually we needed to leave, so we said our goodbyes, left Juan with a nice new football to play with and set off for Coco Banderos Cays.