Sailing to Chichime for dinner.

There is not much wind down here in May, but we managed to sail for an hour or two (and I didn’t mind the tenuous wind because it meant I got to help tack and reset the sail a couple times) on our way to Chichimé island, where we would spend the night.

Chichime is actually 2 islands. I‘m not sure which one (both?) is actually Chichime, and I suspect no one really cares, although one has more Kuna huts than the other. Both islands are small, covered in palm trees and white sand, maximum elevation of about a foot. There is technically a third island, although since it’s about the size of a dorm room, it doesn’t count (but it's a nice place to swim to).

Not Javier's boat. No one was quite sure where that one is.

The islands have a great little lagoon in the middle, and the whole shebang is enclosed by a reef and sandbar ring that makes it a fantastic port. The area gets extra credit from the two visible wrecks, one a thoroughly mangled small hull, the other a looming lump of rust out on the reef.

There is a third wreck nearby, that of the local legend Javier.

Javier was another one of the local captains, ferrying tourists back and forth between Panama and Colombia. Then he got into drugs. The details get murky, but at some point he sank his own boat here…and killed somebody, faked paperwork for the purchase of their house and tried to basically take over their life. Some say they caught him up in Costa Rica, some say he’s still lurking around somewhere.

Within a few minutes of pulling into the lagoon the Kuna dugouts were alongside us. The first was two women selling molas and bracelets. Unsurprisingly I was more interested in the women than the bracelets. Wait, that doesn‘t sound right, let me try that again.

Unsurprisingly, I was more interested in the women’s traditional Kuna dress and ornamentation, than the tourist kitsch they were selling.

Better.

I fear treating people like they’re exhibits in a zoo, so didn’t take any good pictures of them, but here is one of the women heaping the colorful crafts onto the deck. It’s hard to see, but she had a black line painted down the front of her nose, long strings of bracelets wrapping her forearms (and ankles), and more color in her clothes than most of Western Europe combined (no offense K). Some of the women also had gold nose rings, which I initially guessed signified marriage, but it seems to just be personal choice.

Kuna men dress western (or in speedos) and I can’t help but wonder what their traditional garb was like.

Kuna: "How many do you want?"
Fermin: "Well...all of them."

Several men arrived a few minutes later selling fish and conch. Fermin asked for lobster, and an hour later they were back, this time with a hull full of live “langostas.”

A hull full was just enough for Fermin. I think they were surprised at Fermin’s requested purchase.

We saved the lobsters for the next day, and that night dined on paella, salad, and conch ceviche. I ate conch in the Bahamas too, and remembered it as chewier than calamari, not much redeeming value. That impression was reinforced. Not my favorite food. It's an entire animal made of stringy tendon and snot.

Everyone lends a hand on the Andiamo, but the galley was too small for more than a couple bodies, so my chore was cleanup. It was a…unique…cleaning situation. The extremely small amount of counter space was heaped with dirty dishes, a tiny sink, a semi-functional foot pump bringing sea water up to wash with, at the end I unearthed lumps of raw chicken where we’d been setting the clean dishes, and everything was coated in conch slime.

Conch look good in their shells.
I think I'll leave them there from now on.

Conch slime. Conch are snails. Sea snails. So this is slime so thick, so tenacious, so Hollywood ooey-gooey that it coats shifting sand underwater. Not the easiest stuff to get off, especially with just a thin trickle of salt water to work with. (I tried not to wonder how far the sink pump’s intake was from the spout where the pump toilet flushed raw sewage out.)

By the time I finished in the sweltering confines of the ship I was dripping sweat and fairly determined not to use any of those dishes again. (This ship clearly needs a woman, if I may gender stereotypically say so.)

My cabin was directly beneath and behind where they'd been running a generator for a few hours, so once the fumes cleared out I brushed my teeth (with foot-pumped salt water) and went to bed. Sleeping on a rocking ship was a surprisingly peaceful experience, despite the clammy heat of the confined space.

I awoke before dawn and stood up out my overhead hatch to take this picture, already in love with another day.